


Love As A Forgotten Principle

by bmouse



Series: Love As A Thing That Relates To Basketball [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: A Big Ol Canon Rewrite, Alternate Universe, Culture Shock, F/M, Himuro and Murasakibara go to Seirin AU, M/M, Slow Burn, Trying to Get Side Characters Some Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2018-10-14 01:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10525932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: Kuroko Tetsuya quits the basketball club in despair in his third year of middle school. His parents (who had noticed his soul slowly leaving his body) decide to accept a sudden transfer to Los Angeles. And while Kuroko and Kagami are slowly fumbling their way past the language barrier, what the hell is going on back in Japan?Fleeing the threat of being upstaged by a 'Miracle' prodigy Himuro Tatsuya heads south to Tokyo, only to end up at the same school as the source of all his worries. Which raises a couple questions:Can an ‘ordinary’ player ascend to stand among geniuses?Will Izuki ever get tired of making ice puns?And can Seirin’s dysfunctional new Double Aces pull together to teach the other Miracles a lesson, while learning the one they badly need themselves?





	1. Escape from Akita

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote "Love as a Remembered Language" and immediately thought "Hey wouldn't it be fun to do a Parallel 'what's happening in Japan' AU?" And it immediately turned into this enormous epic that ate my brain. Whoops? 
> 
> I'll try and post new chapters every Thursday.

 

Himuro Tatsuya was smoking again. By all known personal metrics, this was a bad sign. 

He was smoking in the park, halfway between the main campus of Yosen High School and his bio-mom’s apartment. Mostly because being a basketball club starter and smoking, even during the year-end break would have gotten him in some shit, and he had less than zero desire to be whacked with Coach Araki’s shinai. Japan’s private schools apparently took a pretty damn medieval view towards corporal punishment. Or, more likely, nobody on the faculty had the balls to tell her to stop. Frankly Tatsuya never had a coach he wasn’t semi-related to before, and it was so damn wacky and bizarre - dodging a bamboo sword for chrissake, like being in a martial arts movie - that he just kinda stood back and let Araki-sensei do it.

Anyway he was in the park because even though his bio-mom wouldn't be back from her studio for another hour or two he didn’t feel like going “home.” Hard emphasis on the air quotes.

At least in the park there was a bunch willow trees and a semi-frozen lake with birds on it, so he was confident that he looked like the intriguing lead of some melancholy French film instead of your average emo 17 year old moping around.

Not that he was moping, exactly. Re-evaluating things? Yeah. That sounded way better, didn’t it.

He took another drag. Well, at least it had taken him a solid seven months to crack. Not too bad, willpower-wise. His last cigarette had been by the ocean the morning he'd left LA. He wondered if this was significant or just one of those random life-coincidences.

So, back to the whole melancholy thing. What the hell was up with that?

On the surface everything was going great. His plans were on track. He was in a strong school, a starter, even his grades were pretty good through a nice combination of actually being bored enough to do the work and a touch of social engineering (Gosh, I'm just a humble transfer student from America, could you please help me with this? Then a flap flap flap of the eyelashes, a few cheap smiles. Too easy.)

Last year year he’d barely missed the Inter High, transferring right in the middle of it, but even that had worked out in his favor. It would have been pretty naive to think that he could transition from playing haphazard no-blood-no-foul street ball to playing in a team effectively right away. Especially the way he wanted - in a way that would contribute to the win yeah, sure, but also let him shine.

And now, thanks to some departed-third-year vacancies and a hell of a lot of work he was the starting shooting guard for the upcoming season. And he just had the one modest, reasonable goal - to be the Ace. 

It was a shame they hadn’t needed a power forward (Alex had been a power forward and Tatsuya was, five layers of cynicism down...a little sentimental) but Okamura had that pretty much locked up, and anyway the position didn't _really_ matter. Hell, MJ had been an SG hadn’t he? He just needed an arena to make himself stand out. To get noticed, to get some buzz by the time he graduated and get scouted by a good university team. And after college he was going to go pro, like Alex. 

He'd decided that, with a kind of frozen clarity, about 3 seconds after punching his little brother in the mouth. 

He'd decided it, and so, no matter what, even if he had to claw his way up a mountain on his clear-coated fingernails it was going to happen.

Let all the older guys in LA who had ever laughed at him crawl back into their sagging old houses and drink themselves to sleep chasing hoop dreams in the NBA. He was one step ahead of all that. He knew the NBA would never come for him anyway. The NBA didn’t give a fuck about sparkly-eyed, plucky Asian kids. 

Poor Taiga, he wondered who was going to explain that to him now that he was gone. 

But no, facing towards the lake where nobody could see his expression slip out of his habitual poker face, Himuro Tatsuya could finally admit that not everything was going to plan lately.

Actually there was a real motherfucker of a wrench in the plan.

About a month back a rustling began in the hallways that led to the locker room. A juicy rumor was going around. The scouts had caught a big fish, a Miracle could be coming to this school - one of the famous Tokyo ‘Miracles.’

And people knew Tatsuya was in the basketball club, knew he was on good terms with their slightly eccentric coach, so inevitably he got asked ‘Hey do you know anything? Is it confirmed? Is it true?” 

And of course at first Tatsuya laughed it off and said ‘Hey it’s just a rumor, right? I may be a starter this season, but it’s not like they tell us anything’. And then he’d see Coach in her office staring down at some mysterious-looking paperwork. And when they were doing drills he would see her looking up at a point in space three feet under the basket in an oddly intense, considering way. Finally, some guy on the second string had cracked and asked about it at morning practice. Right after Coach’s curt ‘Does anyone have any questions?’ (after which they were clearly supposed to bow and chorus ‘no ma’am’) Coach had skewered the guy with a deeply unimpressed look and assigned them all extra laps since they ‘clearly had too much free time to gossip.’ But she hadn’t denied it either. 

And that’s when Tatsuya had quietly started to panic. Actual panic. Wiping-his-sweaty-hands-on-his-uniform-sweater, waking-up-with-clenched-teeth panic. And in parallel, because that’s how his emotions worked half the time, he was also incandescently pissed off. 

Like, _hell no._ He did not come here and work his ass off, going ‘yes Coach, yes Captain’ like some actual fucking straight-arrow jock just to get upstaged by a Tokyo prodigy. How much of a prodigy could you be in middle school anyway? It was fucking middle school?! _God_ , it was giving him a stress headache. He was getting forehead wrinkles.

I mean yeah, the Japanese educational system went like 2000% harder than the US, but with sports? _How?_ Japanese middle schoolers were weedy. No offense but _he_ was only 6 feet and suddenly he was ‘really tall’ over here. People would say he was ‘built’ too, if his face didn’t fake people out and if he didn’t have Okamura and Wei always hanging around for contrast. Okamura and Wei were decent guys, but they were serious statistical outliers on the Asian height curve and pretty much got treated like freaks of nature. Girls literally shrieked and ran away from poor Okamura like he was King Kong.

And as for these supposed Miracle ‘monsters,’ well Tatsuya refused to even read up on them. On fucking _principle_. Not because he was worried or anything, it would just be buying into the hype. No way the whole thing wasn’t some puff-piece propaganda a clever sports journalist had thought up to sell newspapers. The media over here loved overinflating things just as badly as the LA tabloids.

Seriously though. “The Generation of Miracles.” What _adult_ had come up with that? That was the dumbest fucking thing he’d heard in his life. 

It didn’t even sound scary. No real live crew of teenage guys would ever willingly nickname themselves “The Generation of Miracles.” It was like the “Flower Four” from _Hana Yori Dango_ , something straight out of the drama shows that he’d secretly marathon on the weekends when he didn’t feel like dealing with people. 

_Wow I can’t even believe you,_ piped up his brain _your capacity for denial is EPIC. This is like a new record bro. Saying ‘oh it’s no big deal’ when you’re so shaken up you can barely even think about it._

 _OK_ he hissed at it mentally, _Fine_. Fine. _I’ll think about it, here you go:_

You know how everyone complained that young guys thought they were hot shit and didn’t have enough self-awareness to fit on the head of a pin? 

Tatsuya figured that maybe _he_ had a little too much self-awareness. Guys he’d flat out eviscerated in practice( guys who would never _ever_ get out of third-string) then walked around the next day flexing their arms and talking about how they were going to make the starters next year. And the sad thing was that they meant it. The cold hard fact of the skills gap, it just didn’t connect. 

Tatsuya knew his own capabilities, to the inch, to the goddamn centimeter. He was fast and he was accurate and he had enough stamina to run down anybody, boosted by the fact that he had a clean, efficient style that didn’t waste energy on flashy bullshit. 

It would take a hell of a player to be better than him at everything. 

But it was _possible_. 

And you could not just _‘ganbare!’_ your way out of that shit. If this new guy was better he’d get benched. They’d probably sub him in now and then but ‘Hey, that one substitute player was really decent!’ was not an article anyone would ever write. 

Everything would go down in flames. 

He’d be just another washout tripping on hoop dreams. Going through the motions, graduating high school, majoring in something practical, slotting himself into the creepy-ass sameness of Japanese corporate society. 

That sure sounded like a life, right? Might as well go jump off a bridge.

 _That’s_ why he was twitchy lately, _that’s_ why he couldn’t seem to sleep. He kept a good face up and nobody had noticed yet. But every new whisper about ‘the Miracle’ opened the acid drip tap in the pit of his stomach a little wider. 

I guess it wasn’t too late to transfer out.

Which was insane. Totally reckless and completely insane. _Like why don’t you burn every single bridge you’ve got while you’re at it._

 _Why?_ Why _not?_ Burning bridges set you free sometimes.The whole point of not being held back by anyone, not being needed by anyone, was that you could turn on a dime.

Tatsuya laughed suddenly, the smoke burned in his lungs. He had a brief, childish, crazy idea that if he exhaled it would come out as a stream of cold fire.

_Ok, humoring this, where would you even go?_

_Tokyo. I could go back to Tokyo_. He could complete his unintended round trip around the planet Earth and go back to the place he used to be from. The place he used to live before he knew what it was like to miss someplace. The last place he’d felt wholly and completely OK.

And just like that, melancholy was gone. 

Tatsuya smirked, dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. You know what, this had gone on long enough. He was done. Done with worrying, done with worst-case scenarios, 1000% done with this whole ‘Miracle’ thing.

_I am Himuro Tatsuya and I am in control. I will not be putting up with this shit. I am not going to let myself get upstaged by some fucking middle schooler. Fuck this, seriously. I'm out._

_Also, it’s too goddamn cold up here. It’s messing with my skin._

He uncurled himself from the bench, carefully glanced around to see if anyone was looking in his direction and then, seeing that the coast was clear, picked the cigarette butt off the ground and flicked it perfectly into the trash can.

Look, it wasn’t like the goody two shoes act was rubbing off on him, it was just a matter of aesthetics. It had looked too ugly against the clean white snow.

 


	2. Himuro Family Values

For a kid who’d dreamed of running away from home pretty often, Tatsuya had only _properly_ managed it twice. Third time was, apparently, the charm. Turns out he hadn’t ‘settled in’ as well as he thought, because after an hour’s efficient activity his room, the old guestroom, looked exactly the way it had looked when he’d stepped off the plane. Maybe subconsciously he knew that it was a temp living situation all along, he hadn’t exactly decorated.

Either way, when he was done he took a look around the bare walls, the perfectly impersonal bed and smiled. And it was a good thing there wasn't a mirror nearby because it was probably an ugly smile.

That same smile probably got stuck on his face a little when he got the fancy calligraphy paper out of the supply drawers in his mother's study. He uncapped a stupidly-expensive genuine horse-hair brush with his teeth, pulled out one of the dozen bottles of ink and started to write. 

Every language had its ‘formal bullshit’ mode and the Japanese variant was oddly satisfying. For real hardcore keigo Tatsuya still had to pre-construct every sentence in his head, which had the advantage of making his mind slow down. I mean, this was from the _heart_ , he really had to get it right.

"Dear Mother,

I am writing this in light of something we have both become very much aware of over the past several months: this arrangement between us is not working out.

It was deeply inconsiderate on Father's part to try and shoehorn me into your diligent, established life. We have never been close due to our circumstances. And I think rather than both of us suffering over our inability to conform to some sort of 'expected' family relationship we would be better served accepting both our limitations(as well as our preferences) and letting things stand.

I think you would be much happier freed from the burden of having to step into a role you never wanted. And frankly I feel suffocated, playing this generic version of the dutiful son.

With this in mind I've decided to transfer to a school in Tokyo and live there indefinitely. 

I will happily provide my new address, but don't feel obligated to ask after it.

Please don't worry on my behalf.

With respect,

Tatsuya "

Yeah, that pretty much covered it.

Then he picked up an ordinary ballpoint ink pen and a spiral notebook and wrote a note to Araki-sensei. So far she had the dubious privilege of being the only adult in all of Japan that could aaaaaalmost see through his bullshit. ( Probably only because she’d been Alex’s friend back in the day. Alex’s drinking buddy or basketball rival or _something_. Alex had, weirdly enough, kept quiet about it.) 

This letter was a lot less elegantly worded but a little more honest. To summarize: ‘Sorry, can’t stay - unavoidable family circumstances, etc. etc. Here’s a list of guys who aren’t me but who are nice and hungry for glory and who you could probably use in a pinch.’ He had a feeling that if he didn’t get at least some of the words right Araki-sensei would buy her own train ticket and run all over Tokyo with her shinai, whacking people until the city coughed him up.

This was still scary and crazy and impulsive. On a level where even Alex, who’d almost driven to San Francisco to get married to her then-girlfriend as soon as it was legal, would have been like “Whoa, kiddo! Hold the fuck up!” But it was crystallizing. It was becoming real. Real-er by the second.

And he couldn’t explain how but it just made him feel a solid 95% better about _everything_. That shitty feeling - the quiet anxiety hardening into a rock just under his throat had gone away. _That_ was already priceless. He felt like he'd been unchained from an anchor, like he was breathing easier with every breath. 

( _Dude just wait until the down phase hits. You are going to regret this sooo much,_ whispered his brain)

But the thing was: after his bio-mom came back from her studio and read the letter she would probably feel the exact same way. And OK, maybe it would also hurt her, a little. He was petty enough to admit that that was fine. 

You see, the Tatsuya who had gotten off the plane seven months ago had had this very small scrap of hope in his suitcase, like maybe the divorce was the reason everything in his first family had gone off the rails. Maybe it was just the divorce and not, like, _him_. 

Maybe he’d been hoping for one of those dime-a-dozen jdorama subplots: watch as estranged mother and son re-connect again! Maybe over their love of art or whatever. His bio-mom had nothing to do with basketball but Tatsuya could draw pretty well, and he really liked photography. They could meet in the middle, right? In her end of the middle?

Somewhere deep down he’d actually been hoping for something other than polite morning silences and dinner non-conversations about his grades, or her stumbling over the syllables of his name. I mean, Jesus, _she’d_ been the one to pick it out.

But life wasn't a Hallmark movie, life wasn't fair. 

Tatsuya Himuro had a been suspended half a dozen times for getting into fights. He had a juvie record (tagging, trespassing, joyriding) that really should have been longer. He had a folder to himself at the guidance counselor office of every school he’d ever gone to, with notes that probably said ‘Do not get suckered in by that face, this kid has the worst kind of attitude problem. Don’t trust him.’ 

Himuro Tatsuya was a model student. He was friendly to even the most annoying classmates and unfailingly polite to the teachers. The lunch lady thought he was a sweetheart and saved him extra curry buns. He didn’t smoke, or get arrested, or sneak into the house at 2am after punching a guy in the neck at a house party for calling him a fag.

It was all cosmetic, of course. Just one big, long-running fake - maybe the best one he’d ever pulled. Of course all the bad parts were still there. But since he was the only one who knew about them, it was almost like they weren’t. 

He’d done his research, like ‘OK, what’s the perfect Japanese son? What would estranged bio-mom want?’ And then he’d just kind of poured and frozen himself into the mold.

And Himuro Hanabi either didn't notice, or didn't give a shit. 

Her eyes slid awkwardly up and around him every time they got home at the same time, like she'd found an unexpected bill in the mail. 

It was honestly amazing he'd put up with it for so long. 

This wasn’t working, none of it. His standard-issue family was broken and nothing he could ever do was going to fix it. That stupid Miracle kid, whoever the hell he was, was going to come to Yosen and ruin everything. It might look crazy, but he was doing the right thing here.

It was clearly high-time for Tatsuya to face reality and get the hell out of doge. 

And let’s be real, the ‘perfect son’ mold had kind of sucked anyway. Not having to watch his back all the time, and that shallow sort of popularity that came automatic with being hot and good at sports and a minimum baseline of ‘nice-to-people’ was pretty great, he wasn’t going to lie. But he really missed not having to smile when he didn’t feel like it.

And telling people to fuck off.

Maybe there was some kind of ideal balance point between Fake Himuro Tatsuya and Actual Himuro Tatsuya. A sweet spot.

Maybe in Tokyo he could be that guy.

\-----

Ten minutes later Tatsuya was raiding the fridge for things to eat on the train and double-checking his rolling bag(full disclosure: mostly clothes and shoes, a bunch of bathroom stuff (his favorite moisturizer was a bitch to find _OK?_ ), a first aid kid, a macbook, cash in an envelope, one old ring on a chain hidden under layers of t-shirts). 

Then he sat down in the entryway poking at various transit apps, trying to find the cheapest one-way ticket to Tokyo. A little clicking and he had a good candidate that wouldn’t wipe out too much of his savings (at least the exchange rate was still in his favor). He hovered his finger over the ‘Buy’ button. 

_Wait, shit._ There was something he really ought to take care of first. 

Tatsuya squinted at the time. It was 6:50 am in the States. His dad would probably be awake, but not too awake, which was the key. With a flick of his thumb he started up Skype.

This was where a little judicious planning was going to pay off. Tatsuya and his dad had always gotten along best in small increments, at long distances. Since he’d left the States Tatsuya had been calling him once a week like clockwork, part of the whole ‘look who’s a good boy now’ image. Also to soften him up long-term just in case he needed something like this. 

So now a call wouldn’t seem out of the blue, or like he was _just_ calling for a favor. I mean he _was_ , but really it was more like a complicated rate of exchange.

“Hey Dad! Sorry, is it early? I’m still iffy on timezones sometimes,” he started off brightly “How’s the wedding plans?” 

Over the slight static of the connection Tatsuya could hear his dad swallow nervously and fumble for something. Whoever Tatsuya had gotten his nerve from had probably been in his bio-mom’s side of the family.

“Oh! Um…. good. It’s going good.” There was something in his voice already, Tatsuya’s finely honed people instincts just told him to wait for it. He was right, because after an awkward cough, his dad said: “Listen… we’ve had to move the date around a little, trying to accommodate everyone on the guest list has been really crazy. Anyway, it’s next April now. And that’s, like, start of your third year? Isn’t it? I’m not sure I can justify yanking you away from your studies…”

Run that through the patented Himuro Family ‘We Don’t Talk About Anything Directly _Ever_ Filter’ and the signal was loud and clear: I really, really don’t want you to be there and ruin it, please give me an out.

Tatsuya didn’t even blame him. Every prior impression suggested that if Tatsuya actually did show up at the hella expensive party where his dad married some Brentwood white chick he’d be doing it by driving a stolen car through the front door. 

“Hey no, don’t worry. I totally get it! Stella wanted something big right? So guys reserved the Huntington Gardens and you know plane tickets have really been getting pricey lately...“ Tatsuya paused. The pause was important. “The thing is, I’d be happy to tell your girlfriend I’m busy ‘concentrating on my studies’ the next time she calls...”

Stella called him once in a blue moon for truly sad attempts at bonding. Tatsuya figured the Academy would be mailing him his Oscar any day now - she still had absolutely no idea that he hated her. Then again Tatsuya figured that pretending to be OK with things to her face was, all-around, the nicer, more mature option for everyone. It wasn’t even Stella herself (though she seemed to have the personality of damp bread, JFC dad) that was the problem. It was what she represented. Her and her seven year old son.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe his dad sighed into the telephone. “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you want.”

“Hey, don’t worry, it’s nothing _big_. I just want the keys to the Tokyo apartment.” 

“Oh!” he seemed pleasantly surprised that Tatsuya hadn’t asked for money. “You’re thinking of heading down there? Couldn’t stand the cold huh?”

It said a lot about the kind of parent he’d been that his dad didn’t so much as blink at Tatsuya transferring schools on short notice. His dad always had good intentions… Not so much on the ‘actually enforcing structure or being a source of stability in your child’s life’ bit though. Too bad how without the right actions intentions weren’t worth shit, huh?

But Tatsuya figured he ought to throw the old man a bone at this point. Maybe a little bit of the truth. 

“Yeah. Literally _and_ figuratively.” 

“Aw jeez. I guess your mother hasn’t changed, huh.”

'Ugh. Call your own damn ex-wife if you want to know how she’s doing, you freaking coward.' Tatsuya totally didn’t say. You just couldn’t reliably get things out of people by insulting them. 

“I mean, I have the keys in a PO box in the lobby of the building. But you’d have to get them to turn on the gas again. There’s a little money in the fridge but after a while you’d have to pay utilities, and-” 

“That’s OK. I’ve still got some savings, I’ll get a part-time job.” 

“Tatsuya…” 

He could just about hear the words in the pause: _Are you OK? Are you going to be OK?_

_What’s going on with you?_

Over and over in his life people had asked Tatsuya that, with varying degrees of sincerity. He really didn’t know how to answer that question. He was still standing, wasn’t he? And anyway they weren’t looking for the truth, just reassurance, just a reason to stop asking the questions.

“It’s fine.” He said into the phone with that smooth, soothing voice he was seriously getting good at. “Really, I’m _fine_. Don’t worry about me.” 

After he hung up his dad texted him the address for the building along with the number and the combination for the PO box. 

Mission “Actually Have a Place to Live While I’m in Tokyo” was complete.

With supreme satisfaction Tatsuya hit the ‘Buy’ button on the ticket. The train would be leaving in two hours. He left both letters (the fancy, mean one and the less-fancy, less-mean one) on the end table, picked up his backpack and his rolling bag, locked the door the apartment behind him and then viciously kicked his copy of the key under the door.

The outside was crisp and cold. Spring that still felt like winter, with his breath curling visibly out of his mouth. Some of the best moments of his life where quiet moments like this, usually sometime at night. Usually when he felt like he was getting away with something. 

He stood out back in the States but here, with a dark coat and a hoodie on, head down, he was anonymous. Ok, probably not - the bangs were kind of A Look and he still had four-to-five inches on the average person. Still, he tried to go with the flow of the evening foot traffic, made sure to take routes away from the boba places or the cafes where Yosen kids liked to do their homework.

In the end the whole cloak-and-dagger thing was mostly unnecessary.

Nobody stopped him on the train platform. Nobody chased after him to yell “wait, don’t leave!” His phone, after the Skype call was silent and dark. Even after she must have gotten home.

He looked down at it ruefully and then turned it off to save the battery. 

The train doors closed. Tatsuya wedged himself firmly into the corner seat, pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his visible right eye, and was out like a light.

 


	3. Captain Hyuuga’s No Good Very Bad Morning

By 9am of Club Fair Day the future prospects of the Seirin Basketball Club were looking pretty grim. Of course everyone from last year came back, Izuki rolling up with a spring in his step and an awful pun that made Riko giggle. God help him, his own tolerance for that nonsense had gone back up over year-end break so he contented himself with cuffing Izuki on the shoulder with a stack of admissions forms. Koganei and Tsuchida were already out there canvassing with flyers and Mitobe had helped haul the heavy tables out of the equipment shed and pushed the club signboard into the grass lawn, mostly by leaning on it. 

Mitobe was excused from canvassing for obvious reasons.

‘That still wasn’t everyone’ reminded a certain melancholy voice in Hyuuga's head that he had zero time for and would frankly like to strangle. So. Izuki and Koganei and Tsuchida and Mitobe and of course himself, heaven help him. Captain-General of fuck-all. A field Marshall facing the merciless battlefield of the upcoming Inter High with a bare handful of wonderful, dedicated, and woefully insufficient troops.

Five. They had five players. Other high school basketball clubs had dozens of members. They didn’t even technically _have_ a first string since that would actually require someone to sit on the bench.

Somebody. At this point they’d take anyone. He just needed a few warm bodies, attached to people who, for whatever reason, had dodged the soul-crushing Miracles and still wanted to play high school basketball. And then Riko could probably whip them into something decent. She could work wonders, if she didn’t freaking scare them off with the training menu first...

By 9:30 am the universe had backhandedly answered his prayers. He had three completed applications from three first-years dragged in by Koga. Each of them in varying degrees of 'just started high school’ terror, and indistinguishable aside from the fact that one had a shaved head, one looked like mini-Tsuchida, and one had fluffy brown bangs and beady little eyes, like an endearingly nervous weasel. 

Yeah that was going to fucking terrify the Tokyo bracket. For sure. 

Start shivering in your practice shoes - Seiho and Shuutoku!

They were young, green, and kinda weedy any way you sliced it. But now he had someone to pick up balls and warm the bench. Progress, right?

Hyuuga had the urge to take off his glasses and rub his eyes. He didn't do it because he remembered that his grandmother did the exact same thing when she was frustrated and he had a goddamn image to maintain. He was going to be firm and professional and Captain-like even if, even if...

“Excuse me.” said a smooth, polite voice above his head.

Hyuuga looked up.

The first thought he had was ‘Why is this beautiful girl talking to me and why is she wearing a boy’s uniform.’ 

She was ridiculously pretty, _photoshopped_ pretty, with clear, pale skin and glossy black hair in a Vidal Sassoon bob falling dramatically over one eye. I mean wow. In spite of himself he could feel a blush crawling up his neck and into his cheeks. So sue him, he’d always liked girls who could pull off short haircuts. 

He breathed in, nervously through his mouth suddenly catching the smell of cologne(wait, what?) and then, with the assimilation of a few key details Hyuuga realized he was actually talking to a guy.

Gripped by low-key panic he swept his eyes up and down the newcomer’s body, just to make sure. Yep, flat chest, narrow-ish hips, adam’s apple - a guy. It was also the most put-together guy he’d ever seen in his life. His school uniform was technically the same as every other Seirin boy’s uniform but somehow this one looked like someone had tailored and then ironed it. He was wearing black and white checkered socks like some kind of magazine dandy and leather ankle boots that looked expensive and irritated Hyuuga with their expensiveness. 

And he was tall, at least 180cm, taller than Hyuuga himself, but the way he stood, his open, unaggressive body language made him seem smaller and more delicate. 

Hyuuga distrusted him on sight.

“If you’re interested in the basketball club, freshman, fill out an application.” In the wake of his complete fucking embarrassment it came out more gruffly than he intended. 

“I’m a second year, actually. Just transferred from up north.” And though the voice was the same there was the slightest shift in tone, a touch of frost that let Hyuuga know he’d been rebuked for the ‘freshman’ comment. 

The hair on his head bristled, he could feel his temper rising up in his throat. Worst of all, the goddamn blush still wouldn’t go away. He looked over at Riko, his designated social interaction backup brain, and for once there was no help from that quarter. She was staring at the newcomer, spellbound, blushing just as badly.

Stupid dandy ikemen! Who the hell just walked around with one visible eye, like some freaking mysterious manga character?! That eye was the one unpretty thing about him - gray and flat, the color of concrete.

“Could I take one with me?” the stranger said, motioning to the stack of applications, interrupting Hyuuga’s blatant staring. “I’d like a day to think it over. I do hope that’s allowed.”

Hyuuga could see that eye sweeping over him, Riko, Mitobe, their shabby tables, which had been borrowed from the drama club. He would bet anything that it also saw how fat the stack of unused applications was this late in the morning, and maybe even the three sad little sheets in the New Members folder, badly hidden under Hyuuga’s crossed elbows. 

He was just about to open his mouth and tell this prettyboy exactly where he could shove his cool calculating stares when Riko grabbed him by the meat of the elbow and dug her nails in - an unmistakable ‘stop.’

She turned to the newcomer and smiled her best professional smile.

“Of course, of course! Please take one home with you! We accept only dedicated members so please consider your options to the fullest. First practice is tomorrow after school. We’re a small club with large ambitions and space to shine so I do hope you decide to join us.” she chirped.

“Thank you.” The ikemen bowed and fished an application out of the pile. With two elegant steps he disappeared into the outbound crowd. 

Hyuuga would bet his prize figurine of Uesugi Kenshin that this guy had never done anything un-elegantly in his life. 

“Riko, what the hell?! Did you not see that? He was looking down on us, that ikemen bastard!” he whisper-hissed as soon as the other boy was reliably out of earshot.

Riko’s eyes went sharp. 

“I think it’s more that he was evaluating our chances. Which frankly I can’t blame him.” She sighed. It was the first sign all morning that she might be feeling the same way that he was. “There’s different kinds of people in the world, you know? Not everyone just runs full-tilt at things. And we could use a few more strategic thinkers on the team. Don’t be dazzled by that face, he’s definitely an athlete.”

“Humpf! I wasn’t _dazzled_ \- speak for yourself!” he shuffled the folders in front of him. “I still say he looked more like a wannabe idol” he mumbled under his breath.

“Juuunpeiiii~~ I know this may be difficult, but at your age some boys actually care about fashion and grooming and things like that.”

She looked pointedly at his crewcut and his old basketball shoes. 

Hey now! He kept meaning to do something else with his hair! Once in a while he’d caught himself reaching wistfully for the bleaching shampoo, but it didn’t feel right - changing his hairstyle while that idiot Teppei was gone. Things should stay the same until then. And how the heck was he supposed to represent himself as a basketball player without basketball shoes?

(Their new uniforms hadn’t come in yet and his old one was sweaty and faded and though he’d washed it a dozen times since that game with Kirisaki-Daichi he would swear up and down that it still smelled like the hospital.)

So OK. Three newbie first-years and maaaybe one ikemen who gave him bad vibes. A pretty goddamn questionable haul. 

_Ugh._ he thought _If that guy shows up, he better play like he means it._

With effort he straightened up and tried to get his ‘resolute Captain-like’ face back on. There were still maybe 15 minutes left before clubs started breaking down their signs and tables, there was still hope for something to happen.

Five minutes later nobody else had showed up.

Five minutes after that Riko started to tap her foot. This meant that she'd already accepted reality and moved on, she was already making plans about what she could do with just the five of them and the three first years, maybe the ikemen. Hyuuga leaned forward on his elbows.

Three minutes after that there was sort of a hush that travelled. It began by the school gate and expanded like a slow merciless wave in their direction.

Two minutes later a cloud had come over the sun, making him shiver. A wind picked up, plucking cherry blossom petals off the neighboring trees the way a child might pull the wings off a fly. Squinting, Hyuuga Junpei looked up. 

The thing between him and the sun was not a cloud, but a person.

For a second Hyuuga had a totally crazy thought and the thought was 'Kiyoshi!' but the boy standing in front their club table was not their old center. Kiyoshi, among his few useful qualities as a person, had been tall. Skirting the edge of uncomfortable, 'what the hell was your mother eating', '5-cm-of-headroom-on-the-train,' tall. This was worse, this was an actual giant.

Though his bright promising career as a local punk and video arcade delinquent had come to an end, every now and then, when his calves were cramping up like an old man’s after one too many drills, Hyuuga Junpei liked to fantasize about what would have happened if he’d stuck with it. Hey, he wasn’t just some hairdresser’s kid(and besides, barbering was an excellent preparation for The Life - it was basically handling sharp stuff around people’s faces all day), he could have made it as a tough guy! He had fighting instincts dammit! Or, failing that, a terrier’s angry stubbornness to bite and hang on.

Sitting there now, frozen like a rabbit, Hyuuga's 'fighting instincts' had just bought a megaphone and were yelling ‘Run, dumbass, run!’

Not only was the giant long, he was broad, forming a vast menacing rectangle of school uniform directly in front of their table. The sun had stopped shining. The birds were holding their breaths. The wind was freezing his blood, trying to blow away his application stack, and wafting lank strands of too-long purple hair into their visitor’s half-lidded eyes.

Wait. _Purple? Oh._

And then, with a fresh wave of unease, Hyuuga realized that he knew this guy. 

He'd been a part of the wholesale wave of the terror that had been Teiko's team. If, God forbid, someone made it past (or, to be honest, was _allowed_ past as part of some evil, soul-crushing strategy) the Teiko defense and got to the inside they ended up face-to-face (or rather face-to-elbow) with _that_ thing. Teikou's fucking brick wall of a center, the beast under the basket. The monstrous number 5. Murasakibara whatever-the-hell-his-actual-first-name-was. 

Instead of sensibly running Hyuuga just sat there uselessly as his brain played a tape of _Umm, what. Is. Happening. What are you doing here?! If you could maybe leave RIGHT NOW and NOT eat anyone, that would be great._

Meanwhile, an enormous hand, sinister with knobby knuckles and chewed nails thrust itself into the applications stack, bending half of them as its long fingers rooted around and came back with a victim. With dull thwack, the other enormous hand landed on the table, spreading the crumpled application flat. A comically-small hideously chewed-up pencil was produced out of a pocket.

Hyuuga did nothing. Riko did nothing. Behind them, Mitobe said nothing but the look on his face and the set of his shoulders communicated alarm.

Single-mindedly ignoring both of them, Murasakibara continued to write. All Seirin High School club applications were supposed to be completed using blue or black ink. Everyone conveniently forgot this fact. 

When he’d finished it Murasakibara gave the application a single hostile blink, his lower lip wrinkling in distaste like a kid expecting cake suddenly faced with a plate of steamed cauliflower. He put the application into the ‘new members’ box and his chewed pencil back in his pocket. Finally seeming to recognize that there were other people present, he gave Hyuuga, Riko and Mitobe a single bored look, not even bothering to make eye contact. 

It was the look a person might have given a brick wall - zero empathy, complete disinterest. 

A bead of cold sweat rolled down Hyuuga’s back.

Without saying a word Murasakibara turned around and began slowly plodding away from the club table. Halfway across the school lawn he hit a small cluster of re-uniting friends and just sort-of… kept going. A second-year that Hyuuga vaguely knew turned around, saw Murasakibara, gave a strangled scream and leapt out of his way so quickly that he tripped and fell over.

Riko, ever practical, was the first to unfreeze. She reached into the ‘completed applications’ basket and pulled out the much-crumpled paper. They bent their hands over it.

Name: Murasakibara Atsushi

Experience: 

Teiko Middle School Basketball Club - first string. 3 years, 3 National Championships.

Do I really need to say anything else?

Position: Center 

Height: 208cm

Weight: Dunno

Reason for wanting to play basketball: 

He’d simply written nothing.

“Junpei. Pinch me.” Riko whispered.

“I’m not doing that! You’ll put me in a Boston Crab Hold! Or something...” Hyuuga muttered. 

He was still in shock, his fingers smoothing out the crumpled application compulsively because again, what the heck had just happened? The sun was on his face again. Murasakibara had moved on to wherever unholy human abominations went when they weren't ATTENDING HIS SCHOOL APPARENTLY, _OH MY GOD._

Meanwhile nature blithely continued on. The other clubs gradually stopped staring in their direction and resumed breaking down their tables. The birds were singing in the trees. At least until they were disturbed by Aida Riko's ear-splitting wail of joy.

“Oh my gooooshhhhh! A Miracle! One of the actual Teikou Miracles. That’s Soooo INTERSTING~~ Junpei! Junpei, you don’t even know! People that tall aren’t usually athletic because they have one leg that’s significantly shorter or other health problems or joint problems. Or they aren’t flexible enough. Do you realize that guy must have been playing basketball and doing some kind of athletic training since he was really little- ”

"Riko, I don't think that thing was ever little." he interjected.

"-and I thought they were all supposed to go to top seeded schools. But it’s just our luck! I can't wait to see what kind of menu he can handle!" 

No, he did not want to think about how a 208cm-tall first-year came into being. That was freakish. That was too much. That was genetics deciding to fuck with the Japanese National Height Average as a whole and with Hyuuga Junpei in particular. Christ, the sheer size of him! And that face! Those tiny, mean-looking eyes! How the hell was he supposed to be Captain of _that_?!

Riko, heartlessly unaware of his panic, scrunched up her nose. “Wait, crap. I should have offered him water. Actually the guy before, too.” 

“Bet you that freaking ikemen doesn’t even show up.” Hyuuga said. This was safer conversational ground.

 _I really, really hope that freaking monster doesn’t show up._ He didn’t say.

“I wonder...” Riko said. Her face was shining with determination. “Either way it’s going to be a really interesting year!”

Hyuuga Junpei tacitly handed the day his articles of surrender, took off his glasses and began to rub his eyes.


	4. The Boy Who Blocked The Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP. My only excuse is that I moved this month~~ Now that I have more time I should get back to a better update schedule ;-__-  
> At least it's a long chapter?

When the first day of school was over Tatsuya went right back to the apartment. It had sure kept him busy since he got to Tokyo last week. _Technically_ the place was livable now, especially once he’d gotten the gas turned back on. In actuality Tatsuya’s memory had conveniently glossed over a few things - like the whole remodeling deal.

His Dad had still been in the process of ripping out the guts of the place and turning it into a bachelor pad before his life took a hard left and he’d left for America, Tatsuya in tow. For a decade the place had been left in a state of franken-house - half polished and half broken.

The kitchen was pretty much done - shiny black appliances, dove-gray tile and fancy pressed-wood countertops, like something out of a catalog. Tatsuya may already be a tiiiiny bit in love with it, even though one of the back burners was a bastard and stubbornly refused to light. 

There was also the thing where his childhood bedroom didn’t exist anymore because the walls had been knocked down to expand the bathroom. Now if that wasn’t a metaphor for something he’d eat his favorite high-tops. But on top of the usual weird Japanese scrubbing stools, the bathroom now had a cubicle shower and some ridiculous jacuzzi-esque bathtub that could probably fit a handful of anorexic models. 

Dear old Dad had clearly been dreaming big.

Tatsuya badly wanted to take the tub out for a test drive (models optional), but he was pretty sure he needed to have another source of income lined up first because of the sheer amount of water it would take to fill the thing.

And furniture-wise he was shit outta luck. There was one sectional L-shaped couch pushed against the living room wall. A new-five-years-ago flat screen TV with a DVD player. A bare, plastic-wrapped mattress in the corner of the one remaining bedroom, four kitchen counter barstools and that was /it/. 

At least the living room still had carpet. The master bedroom floor was bare cement, there wasn’t even a light fixture. Decor included: absolutely nothing, and a long ominous crack in one of the walls.

All around it was kind of a raw setup. Pretty minimal. Maybe with a couple more weeks and a judicious application of some of the money his Dad had left in the fridge Tatsuya could make it seem like a hip, stylish minimal as opposed to ‘Hello, I am clearly an abandoned teen, squatting in an abandoned space. Please don’t call social services, I hear your foster system sucks.’ 

Still, when he got out of the elevator and walked up to the fourth door on the left the brass plaque on the wall next to it said “Himuro.” In the process of exiting stage left from each other’s lives neither parent had had the heart to mess with it. 

Back when the sign had been shiny and new it had been way above Tatsuya’s head. It was level with his ribcage now. He’d traced the tarnished brass characters with his finger, mouth curling reluctantly into a smile. 

Anyway, school had been pretty standard - an assembly, teachers giving formulaic speeches about ‘diligence and success, blah blah blah’, some basic orientation stuff. He honestly hadn’t paid too much attention. The morning had been the interesting part.

And now he had a blank club membership form and a lot to think about. 

Tatsuya did the only thing he could do - he put on an old band t-shirt, brandished an anti-mold tile cleaner like a gunslinger reaching for his trusty Colt, and went to clean the bathroom. 

Hey, look, it was definitely not a fact he wanted known about himself, but doing random domestic chores had always centered his thoughts like nothing else. Many a school paper had been written(read: lovingly bullshited) in his head as he'd been scrubbing Alex's countertops or raking the yard or dusting the little guest room that she said he could always come use if the art-crowd circus at his Dad's place got to be too much.

He wondered how Alex was getting on without him. He was being a bad accidentally-adopted son, he should probably call. It was telling that he hadn’t thought about his bio-mom much all week but he couldn't help but think about Alex. Even though she was still kind of on his shit list for trying to stay ‘neutral’ over what happened with Taiga. Since when could _Alex_ be 'neutral' about literally anything? He'd seen her almost get into a bar fight over what was the best brand of mexican beer.

Speaking of alcohol, poking around under the bathroom sink he'd found an ancient bottle of Honey-Apple flavored whiskey tucked behind a dusty stack of toilet paper. The sensible, mature thing would have been to pour it out and recycle the bottle. Tatsuya absolutely failed to do either of these things.

Funny, at a party he have been the first to say that flavored whiskey was ‘weak shit’ but the truth was he kind of liked it. There were some things that needed a bit of sweet in them to soften the hit. And considering that the bathroom now smelled like grapefruit-scented-freshness instead of vague neglect, he figured a little reward was in order. Tatsuya slingshotted the rubber gloves off his hands and into the sink, poured himself two fingers, and curled up on his one surviving couch to think. 

So. Seirin had it's good points. That was, after all, why he’d picked it initially - it was a new school, situated in the middle of all the Tokyo action. There were Kings to the left of them, Kings to the south. Seihou. Shuutoku. That Touou school everyone in the blogs kept yapping about for some reason even though their record before wasn't all that great before. 

Against all that Seirin was like a plucky besieged kingdom in need of a hero. He could be that, couldn't he? “The Ace arriving in a team's hour of need.” Wasn’t that an attractive narrative? ‘Perfect Himuro Tatsuya’ seemed like just the man for the job and then Actual Himuro Tatsuya could get some scout attention. 

But when you compared it to Yosen the state of the basketball club was, frankly, laughable. Yes the blushing super-in-denial-about-his-bisexuality boy with the crewcut had been adorable (rude though, he was lucky Tatsuya had been feeling gracious). But their numbers were bullshit. He'd spotted three guys handing out flyers, a decently tall quiet guy lurking around by the club sign, and that short-haired girl who was clearly Important because everyone kept looking to her for their cues. And that was _it._

Angry blushing crewcut boy might even be the Captain, God help them.

If you flipped to 'The Underdogs' in the dictionary Seirin’s Basketball Club’s picture would be there. All they needed to star in the next Disney Channel Original: Nauseatingly Uplifting Sports Movie was a fucking three-legged dog.

But a little judicious googling revealed that in true underdog fashion they'd gotten pretty far last year, especially for a new team. Especially when their old Ace center had to drop out due to a season-ending injury. That kind of thing was enough to mess with even an experienced team's momentum, no wonder they'd washed out afterwards. 

More details would have been nice, but putting ‘Seirin Basketball Club’ in the search bar got him a depressingly short list. The press didn’t care about plucky newbies unless they won something huge, so their first season had barely gotten a couple of sentences in all the usual magazines.

Actually, out of everyone in the club, it was the girl that had caught his attention the most. He'd tried a specific kind of smile on her, and yeah, at first glance she'd blushed and gone quiet like a lot of the girls back in Yosen. But then that little speech of hers - ‘We're an ambitious team with room to grow.’ _Like, damn_.

Tatsuya snorted into his now-empty glass. She really got his number, hadn't she. That girl was _sharp_. 

Overall these Seirin kids seemed... nice. Not that Yosen's regular club members were awful people, but things were a little more knives-out in such a big organization. Some of the second string guys had clearly had a problem with yet another transfer student ending up on the starting lineup. There’d been grumbling, but Tatsuya had just kept that water-off-my-back poker face up, kept killing it in practice. When weak guys saw that they couldn’t get to you there was an 80 percent chance they’d get bored and leave you alone. 

Of course in the ‘other 20 percent’ scenario they got together in a group and tried to beat you up in the stairwell. That was people for you. It was almost too bad this last bunch hadn’t had the guts to try it. For months now Tatsuya had been positively _itching_ for an excuse to kick someone's ass.

Which really proved that nothing had changed all that much. 

Wherever you go, there you are, right?

Tatsuya lay back on the couch and looked up at the cement ceiling. His tolerance had started to slip over months and months of ‘trying-my-best-to-go-straight-here’ and the whiskey was really kicking in.

_Should I stay at Seirin? Should I run with this? What do I have in common with a bunch of earnest ‘try hard’ types?_

_Don't kid yourself, what do you have in common with anyone?_ whispered his shitty brain. 

But what could they do for him if they didn’t seem to have their own shit together? Would he have better luck with one of the Kings? Shuutoku was close-ish but the commute would be a bitch. Also, their uniforms were _orange_. Traffic cone orange. 

Even _he_ would have a hard time pulling that off.

Ugh, this was the worst part, _deciding_ things. The instant before a choice was made was the best part. That's what made a fake perfect - for a split second both plays existed at the same time, in the scope of cosmic possibility. Like that whole metaphysics thing with split dimensions every time you made a different choice. 

And on one hand, that line of thinking was cool, and on the other hand it was like ‘Danger! Danger! Red Alert!’ Because his brain wasn’t in Tokyo anymore, it was on a court next to his old middle school in Santa Monica and he was watching his brother lose, watching him _losing on purpose_.

What would have happened if Taiga hadn't tried to throw that game? Was there a universe out there, somewhere, where both of them still wore their rings? 

Tatsuya slowly put his empty glass down on the floor. If he was going to grip it any harder he was going to break it. 

Clearly he needed to go out for a bit. Get a little air. There was too much empty space here for his thoughts. 

\-----

There was really only one sure-fire way to get himself back on track, only one thing he wanted to do with the rest of the night.

Luckily there was a public court about seven blocks down the street from his building. 

Tatsuya had seen the familiar chain link fence out of the corner of his eye and he headed that way now, walking too fast for it to look casual - a little embarrassed at his own eagerness but a little too buzzed to really care. 

This street had seen better days and so had the court. Weeds - mostly huge bunches of blooming dandelions, grew along the perimeter at the cracked edges of the blacktop. The chain-link fence was bubbled and bent, like it had been through a hurricane. In a fit of boredom someone( let’s be real: probably several someones) had tried to rip the door off its hinges and then park services or whoever had half-assedly put it back on. 

Even the lines were washed-out and faded. Here and there someone had drawn them back in with colored chalk. The basket nearest to the door had a rust stain chewing away at the corner of the backboard, the frayed netting hanging limp in the absence of wind. Even the post of it was _bent_ , legit bent. Tatsuya was starting to think he owed some mad respect to either the local punks or the local weather. 

Weirdly enough, the broken-down ness of it all set him at ease. Everything was so sterile and clean in Japan sometimes. Places like this made Tatsuya nostalgic. They reminded him of Venice, the savage bare-bones spines of the street courts south of Rose Ave. And then he looked at the other basket. 

_Whoa._

The other basket had clearly been rebuilt. Someone had full-out Daft Punk 'Harder Faster Stronger'd’ the thing - the post was heavy steel pipe, with two triangular 'legs' in the back for extra stability, the rim was double-welded to the backboard on top of the rivets. The net was made out of chains.

"God _damn_." Tatsuya murmured at it in admiration. _Wow. Look at you. How come you’re like this? Who the hell plays here?_

It was a mystery, and for the first time in a long time he felt a stab of curiosity. _Hey, I live here now. From now on this is my court too. Whatever the reason is, I wanna find out..._

And then Himuro Tatsuya, smooth operator, breaker of locks and bones, sweet-talker of the LAPD, functionally on his own since age eleven, realized that he'd come to play basketball and forgotten to bring a ball. 

_Shit! Oh that's_ it _. Fuck you, Dad's Questionable Apple Whiskey, we are breaking up. Vodka wouldn't let me down like this._

Technically he didn’t even own a ball of his own anymore. He’d left his personal one back in Akita and it was late enough that stores were probably closing. _Fuck!_ He wanted to kick something except with tonight’s luck he’d probably break a toe.

And then his eyes caught sight of something over on the other side of the court, by the bench. Walking over, nudging it into the light with his foot, Tatsuya saw that it was an old sports bag.

Once upon a time it had been white with blue piping, but years of hard use had turned it a grubby gray, spotted with an assortment of stains. The custom stitching was coming loose on all three of the words across the front: _Something_ -kou Middle School. 

Tatsuya squinted at the kanji. After months of sudden re-acquaintance, kanji and Tatsuya’s brain were still not friends. Meikou? Teikou maybe?( Where had he heard of that?) 

Some poor kid must have forgotten it after a pickup game. It was lumpy, but the round bulge of a basketball inside was unmistakable.

 

_Dude, we’re stealing from middle schoolers now?_ Tatsuya’s shitty brain piped up.

_Hey, I'm not stealing, per se. As soon as I’m done with it I'm going to check if there's a phone number and call the owner. The whole nice guy shtick._ Or, OK, maybe he’d just leave it where he found it. He'd always been better at being good when other people were watching.

It was getting darker now, the setting sun left plenty of shadows in the corners. And his back was to the door now anyway. Slowly, carefully, Tatsuya unzipped the bag. 

The inside was just as worn and stained. There were a few painfully new notebooks, a few horribly chewed pencils, five carefully square-folded empty chip bags,( five? _yikes_. kid, you might want to cut down) and a worn basketball. 

_Hey, Heaven helps those who help themselves_ Tatsuya thought as he eased it out. _Don't worry, I'm going to treat you nicely and put you right back._

It had good bounce to it. He traced the faded logo with his index finger - a high quality brand worn down almost to the bone. Some poor kid’s birthday gift from a rich relative? Shit, now he felt a little bad. Not bad enough to put it back.

Really if he was serious about practicing he ought to stretch first, do some drills. Instead he stepped onto the three point line, scuffing the chalk marks. He bounced the ball, gathered it up, flowed into a jump shot. It arced out of his hands like an unexpected friend. The chains of the net jangled in a victory chorus. It sounded as good as he'd thought.

He felt himself grin. _Hell yeah_. He hadn’t been the starting SG for nothing! The ball bounced and Tatsuya loped over to get it, feeling present in his body, hearing infrequent, blessed silence in his own head.

Bounce, swish, bounce, swish, a layup, a standard three, then another, then the trick shot. There were no sounds except for the bounce of the ball, the rattle of the chains, his own breathing. A little bit of a breeze picked up and sleepily ruffled his bangs. 

In the background, little by little, the setting sun went down completely.

It was funny, he’d come out here to be alone. There had been so many new people to deal with today, so many ever-so-important first impressions to manage that he’d felt drained. Tatsuya’s ‘Gracefully Interacting With Humans’ bar had been approaching zero and he knew from experience that when he got like that he needed space to himself.

But now, looking around the empty court and the hazy, rising moon this seemed like another lonely landscape. The latest one in a long series of them. 

_So, you moved to a city of 13 million and still don’t have a single person to hang out with._

Clearly, the whiskey was determined to be trouble even on the way out. This was why he shouldn’t drink by himself. At parties it made him flirt sharper and dance better and burned away the last traces of a weird self-consciousness that stubbornly remained no matter how good he was at reading a room. When he was alone it opened up some back door in his head and all the bad thoughts he’d casually shoved down during the day slithered back in.

But whatever, depressing as it was, Tatsuya was used to this. On a good day it was easy to wrangle his stupid brain into shape with a little cold hard logic: Fact one: he’d never had trouble talking to people, _Taiga_ was the socially awkward one, thanks much. Fact two: he’d only been here a week, most of it indoors working on making sure he had electricity and hot water. Fact three: school was just starting - in a student population of a thousand there had to be _someone_ interesting who’d be worth his time. 

_Man though,_ Tatsuya thought, leaning back on his heels, looking up wistfully at the moon. _I kind of wish someone would show up right now._

He was all warmed up, it would just about make his night if some local punk wandered in to get schooled.

Just then something rustled in the shadows at the far corner, behind the basket. The breeze picked up a little, making Tatsuya shiver, tugging at his jacket. 

_What the hell? Was something sleeping there? It better not be a dog._

He shrugged, stepping back, adjusting his stance for another three-pointer. Like a little noise and some weather was gonna mess with his flow. He brought the ball up, let go. It sailed, rotating lazily.

Two feet in front of the basket it stopped. Rather, someone stopped it.

Tatsuya's eyes went wide. 

_Am I... Am I dreaming?_

The person who’d stepped out of the shadows, who’d blocked his shot was standing under the basket. The top of his huge shaggy head was about three feet below the rim. The chains of the net hung above it like a weird reverse crown. 

It was the biggest, most forbidding-looking dude Tatsuya had ever seen in his whole life. 

_Are my eyes working right? Is this a nightmare?_

That breeze was definitely a wind now, and it was whispering threateningly in Tatsuya’s ears. There was a sharpness in the air, like static. Overhead the court lights flickered. 

Tatsuya halfway expected the giant to not be there when they came back on, like basketball’s own version of The Poltergeist. But he was still there. 

_OK. Wow. NEVERMIND. I take that alllll back._ Tatsuya thought frantically. _Hard ‘Nope’ on the whole ‘I want someone to show up’ thing._

Slowly, negligently, the giant let the ball drop out of his hand and then nudged it with his foot back in Tatsuya’s direction. 

He didn't say a word, but the message was clear: try that again, I dare you. 

Tatsuya picked up the ball, mechanically, halfway expecting to wake up back on his couch with neck crick and a hangover. When his fingers touched it, the basketball zapped him, like carpet shock. He could have sworn he saw an actual spark. 

_What the hell is my life right now?_

OK, so the evening had clearly taken a left turn into some kind of Mythical Cautionary Tale. The Goddess of Basketball had heard Tatsuya getting a headful of that old Greek _hubris_ and sent him a legit fucking Titan to battle.

The sensible thing would be to accept his limitations and bounce. Tatsuya was not feeling sensible. Actually he was feeling punchy, drunk and obstinate. Anyway nobody ever reached Greatness by being sensible. He’d come here to play, and he was going to _play_ dammit. 

Defiantly, standing in the same spot he took the shot again. Or at least it looked like the same shot, from the outside. But really he messed with the timing, releasing the ball a split second quicker than he had before, disguising it in the smoothness of the motion. Because Alexandra Garcia didn’t raise no fools. ( OK, the jury was still out on Taiga) 

An impossibly long arm shot upward.

_Thwack_. 

Application for three pointer: DENIED.

This time the giant passed him the ball. Or more like he lazily lobbed it at Tatsuya who barely managed not to stagger back from the force. 

"You gonna give up?" the giant said.

Whatever Tatsuya expected mythical court-monsters to sound like, it wasn't that. His voice was the first non-terrifying thing about him - syrup-slow, a little on the nasal side. He almost sounded _bored_. But Tatsuya knew shit-talk when he heard it. 

Well fuck this guy. _Watch me, you oversized Godzilla bastard! I'm going to show you something you’ve never seen before._

“Don't hold your breath!" Tatsuya said, his voice ringing out across the distance. With a smooth motion he unzipped his jacket and threw it behind him. Look, this might turn out to be his famous last stand, a little drama was clearly called for.

Down-court the giant cracked his neck. It looked about as thick around as Tatsuya’s thigh.

Yeah... this was probably going to end super badly, but fuck it.

It was at that point Himuro Tatsuya did something that no opponent of Murasakibara Atsushi had done in months, maybe years.

He rolled up his sleeves and charged. 

\---

Yep, he’d been right - ‘super badly’ was exactly how this was going.

Time had no meaning anymore. It was just him, the court, and this freaking nightmare human. Even Tatsuya’s worst LA opponents, the steroid-beefy Ed-Hardy-wearing high school dropouts, would have been like ' _Oh hell naw_ , time for a smoke break' ages ago. Probably as soon as they saw this guy coming around the corner.

Tatsuya kept at it. He was powered by adrenaline, spite, and the righteous indignation of a man who knew deep down that he’d probably never pass 6’1’’. 

Not that it was doing him much good. Even his usually dependable fakes just weren’t that effective (being more sober might have helped). But it almost didn’t matter what the next move was - if he tried to dribble the ball forward he got blocked, if he went for a shot it got slapped down somewhere on the way to the basket. 

_OK Tatsuya, quit fucking around, you gotta make something happen here. What about that whole 'cool head and hot heart' thing you like to preach about?_ Guts, persistence, etc. - the ‘hot heart’ alone wasn’t getting him jack shit so far. He had to _think_. 

OK, so back in Akita he’d played Wei Liu one-on-one a bunch of times. Not, like, _voluntarily_. He’d been gritting his teeth and annoyed down to his bones every time, but he’s played him. (Playing Okamura was useless - he tiptoed around everyone who wasn’t an official ‘enemy’ player like they were breakable little bunny rabbits.) Actually Tatsuya suspected that Coach Araki assigned him man-to-man defense against Mt. Hong Kong whenever she thought he was getting too pleased with himself. But now, that experience was useful. 

In the game, the really tall guys knew they had it made. They got complacent, they got slow, they got sloppy, they had blind spots. 

This guy... had almost no blind spots. He was good, he was _stupid_ good. One of those horrible merciless loops of good instinct informs a-shitton-of-practice informs more instinct. Most of his blocks he wasn’t even _looking_ at the ball.

But, he was still human. Probably. Maaaaaybe. His left arm was a fraction slower than his right, and he didn't bend down far enough because it was probably a pain to bend your knees all the time when you were that goddamn tall. And he wasn't used to people getting in his face. 

In light of this new ‘up close and personal’ strategy Tatsuya’s reasonably well-developed common sense was yelling 'JFC, _what_ are you doing?! There’s a _reason_ he’s not used to it. Did you see the size of that arm? One good swat and ER nurses will be helping you do your eyeliner _in the hospital_ ' but the cold rational side of his brain said ‘look, this is the one advantage you have, you gotta push it.’ 

So Tatsuya got in this guy’s face. His field of view became a grubby white tank top and improbable pectoral muscles. Up close the giant smelled like dirt and potato chips.

When the opportunity came Tatsuya stepped forward, slipped under the sweeping left arm and did a truly last-minute hook-shot - simple and efficient, the shortest path between him and the hoop. Spinning around, (again, _not even looking_ wtf!) his opponent managed to juuuuust graze it with one of his freakishly long fingers and send the ball bouncing harmlessly off the rim.

_Damn, almost!_

But he'd surprised him. Tatsuya could tell that much. His opponent blew a strand of his hair noisily out of his mouth. His eyes, they were some dark indeterminate color under his overgrown bangs, were looking at Tatsuya with a surprise that quickly slid into hostility.

Tatsuya put two fingers to his temple and saluted, because apparently he was feeling a little suicidal.

And then the bastard got _faster_. 

_God, this is so unfair._ At least Tatsuya’s smaller size usually came with as speed advantage. Not so much now. Four fruitless runs at the basket later he knew he was starting to run out of gas. A little more of this and his hands would start shaking and then he wouldn’t even have the finesse left to do the trick shot. It was now or never. 

But the trick shot( He’d been thinking of calling it the Mirage Shot. Like, _officially_. All the greats had A Move and that sounded cool, didn’t it?) was for games _only_. Tatsuya had made the rule himself. If too many people saw it they’d figure out the secret and he’d lose his best trump card - one of the main things that set him apart from the sad mass of players in the top end of the middle. 

But dammit, his pride was on the line! This was maybe the strangest, toughest one-on-one of his life, even if his opponent couldn’t be bothered with anything but defense. And no matter what, Tatsuya wanted to win.

For a crazy moment he had a feeling like, if he could just make _this_ guy acknowledge him, he could do it - become the Ace, go pro, have anything that he wanted in the world. 

Instead of stepping forward Tatsuya stepped back, back to the three point line where it all began. The giant didn’t move to follow him. Tatsuya had a feeling he was getting underestimated again. 

_Well, it’s your loss!_

He took a deep breath, called up every reserve of concentration he had, every last bit of energy out of his tired body. The ball sailed.

This time, the giant’s hand touched only air. 

"Hell yeah! See that?! No you didn’t! Because that's the whole point!" 

_Ha! Take_ that _Goddess of Basketball. I passed your test, didn’t I? Next time I’m in a pinch you better smile down on me, just a little._ Tatsuya would have done a victory shuffle if he wasn’t 90% sure he’d trip over his feet, so he settled for punching the air.

The giant scowled at him. To Tatsuya’s supreme satisfaction he was breathing a lot harder than he’d been when they started. A single drop of sweat slid down the long slope of his nose.

"It's _one_ stupid basket.” he ground out. “Quit being so happy, it's annoying."

He peered suspiciously up at the rim, at the net which was still swaying a little, then at Tatsuya(current status: grinning like an idiot), then at the ball which had rolled to a stop by his shoes. Slowly he picked it up and raised it up to his face.

“Wait.” he squinted down at it, turning it over in his hands. “Is this my ball?” 

“Ummmm” Tatsuya replied intelligently. 

In his defense, he was still floaty from his victory and his vision was doing that thing where little sparkles of light were dancing across everything. Pretty, and a surefire sign of dehydration. He wanted a gold star for still being able to _stand_ at this point. 

“You _stole_ my ball?! It’s mine and you touched it…you _jerk_! Give me one good reason not to crush you.” 

Tatsuya had been called a lot of four-letter words in his day but he was pretty sure nobody had called him a ‘jerk’ since he was eight. Still the kindergarten-level of insults in no way detracted from the seriousness of the situation.

Namely: In the giant’s huge, root-like hands the full-sized basketball looked like the three-quarter ones the little kids in Alex’s classes played with. If anyone could literally crush someone’s skull with their bare hands like an 80’s Kung Fu flick, this guy could probably manage it. 

With a practiced eye Tatsuya calculated the distance to the court door versus his worst sprint time versus how long the damn giant’s legs were. The math was not in his favor. 

_Aw shit, I’m gonna die._

“Look, to be fair, I thought someone had just left it there. I’ll admit, ethically, - not my best decision.” Tatsuya was racking his brain. “I’m... sorry?” Crap, he probably should have lead with that.

“Parfait.” said the giant.

“ _Excuse me?_ ” 

“Buy me parfait, and I won’t break your legs.”

“OK.” Tatsuya said quickly. “Sure. Sounds fair. Let’s go.”

-


	5. Attack on Parfait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> spoilers: the parfait dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess what's not dead!? This fic! 
> 
> Summer just kind of ate me y'all. Now I've got a bit more breathing room in my work schedule to get back to this story.

To Tatsuya's surprise actual, non-fantasy lighting did not improve the situation.

The whiskey was blameless - even removed from the vaguely-mythical atmosphere of the half-broken court the giant was still very much a giant. Some part of Tatsuya had expected him to disappear after the two of them had stepped outside of the bounds of the chain link fence.

Instead Tatsuya had to half-jog to keep up with his long, single-minded strides and watch him literally have to duck down to get into the cafe doorway and carefully fold his mile-long thighs under one of it’s tables. His legs still stuck out when he was done - dark uniform pants and old red basketball shoes in a size that definitely had to be special-ordered. 

The whole thing was like watching an adult trying to use furniture for a little kid’s tea party. Tatsuya sort-of wanted to laugh, except that would probably be terrible for the future structural integrity of every single bone in his body. Also, admittedly, kind of a dick move.

Meanwhile his unexpected companion for the evening poked an improbably long knobby finger at the menu.

"I want _this_ one." he said.

Tatsuya, who had been bracing his leftover budget for the most expensive thing, was pleasantly surprised to see that this wasn’t it. Instead, the sacrificial offering of the evening was some weird experimental pistachio-ice-cream-with-squid-sauce flavor. The picture showed that it came with green whipped cream and a side of extra-large shortbread cookie that was shaped like an octopus. 

Could this night get any more surreal? 

Tatsuya went up to the counter and ordered, forcing himself to try and walk normally no matter how tired he was or how much his legs wanted to shake. LA had taught him that showing weakness was a definite ‘no’ when you found yourself in strange company after dark. About a minute later the parfait-and-cookie came out. Frothy, sugary-looking, _cute_ \- it was the sort of thing gaggles of middle-school girls would get with their friends after class.

Tatsuya frowned down at it. 

_That’s gotta be 400 calories, at least. Ick. You couldn’t_ pay _me to eat that._

Still, a deal was a deal, he brought it back and set it down on the table. Completely ignoring Tatsuya, the giant picked up the long, narrow parfait spoon, spinning it in a practiced way between his fingers, and dug in.

Tatsuya watched him eat. Too late, he realized he should have maybe ordered something for himself (personal dislike of sweet things aside) just to make this whole thing seem a little more normal. Then again, he had a feeling that ‘normal’ was a lost cause from here on out.

At this point he felt justified in giving up and just straight-up staring at the guy across from him. His mind was still coming down from fight-mode, trying to wrap itself around everything. During their match, if you could call it that, everything had been this sort of choppy adrenaline blur - patches of light and shadow falling across the court, the old lights flickering overhead. Tatsuya had seen his opponent in bits and pieces - an outflung arm, shoulders that blocked out the light, the point of his chin. Now he could see the whole picture.

The guy across the table hadn’t had a haircut in _years_. 

He had a long face, a long nose, thick lips and weirdly delicate eyebrows above narrow half-lidded eyes that managed to look simultaneously sleepy and vaguely menacing. It was a strange bunch of features to find all in one person. Definitely not a collection Tatsuya would have expected to go together as well as it did. 

He should have been ugly, but he wasn’t. 

Out of nowhere Tatsuya had an urge to take his picture. It was probably his photographer’s eye acting up or whatever. Back in Cali, everyplace you looked was begging for a snapshot and the Venice boardwalk definitely had it’s share of interesting-looking people, but nobody quite like this. 

Also ‘yeah I played one-on-one against this goddamn huge guy for like an hour and then he lowkey extorted me for dessert’ was just the kind of story where somebody would call ‘pics or it didn’t happen.’ Even with a picture Tatsuya was sure nobody back in the States would ever believe him, maybe if he put something normal-sized in the foreground for scale?

At least Tatsuya had solved the mystery of the reinforced basket: this guy. This guy was the reason. He probably lived around here and city services had probably gotten real tired of him breaking the hoop off.

Now only one final mystery remained: what on earth had possessed a guy who looked like he could bench-press _God_ to dye his hair purple. Because that hadn’t been a trick of the light. His hair was _purple._ Even his eyebrows were purple. Not even a ‘manly’ super dark shade. Fucking _lavender_. And Tatsuya was usually on the beat with the fashion stuff... Maybe it was some new Tokyo punk trend? Like: I’m so scary IDGAF if my hair is pastel?

Just then the giant looked up from his steady and merciless campaign against the parfait (totally catching Tatsuya staring, _shit_ ), and thanks to the overhead lighting Tatsuya could see that his eyes were purple too.

_Oh. Whoa._

That was... That was really cool, actually. Vibrant hair/eye color mutations were one in a thousand in Japan, even rarer in the rest of the world. As a kid Tatsuya had been vaguely disappointed that his ethnicity hadn’t come through for him and he’d ended up with plain, boring black and gray. 

Actually the chances of having one of those bright-colored-hair genes _and_ being over two meters were so ridiculously tiny that the guy in front of him was a real live statistical miracle. 

Though man, that violet stare was unsettling - small irises, pinprick pupils. Unicorn-eyes were creepy on a human being.

Tatsuya tried not to fidget. The giant blinked at him as if suddenly remembering why Tatsuya was there at all.

“You’re not bad.” he said, slow and flat, like the words were dragging themselves reluctantly out of his mouth.

“I don’t think you know me well enough to say that.” Tatsuya replied without thinking, and then immediately wanted to drop through the floor. _What the hell, self._ He was usually a lot better with new people. A lot smoother, anyway. 

This got him a sullen stare. “At _basketball_.” 

So first a threat and now a… compliment? A sort-of compliment( which, to be fair was the only kind two guys ever gave each other). Still, it was oddly nice to hear, the reluctant delivery only made it... more satisfying, somehow. Tatsuya tried not to feel a warm little flicker of appreciation and pretty much failed.

“Thanks.”

Right then and there, he decided that he was so over this whole ‘being worried about getting his legs broken’ thing. It was hard to keep his guard up when the atmosphere had become so oddly peaceful, punctuated here and there with a contented slurp. And no matter how badass they were on the court it was just amazingly difficult to be intimidated by someone who was trying to scrape clumps of corn flakes and whipped cream out of the corner of a little green parfait glass with an equally-small cheery yellow spoon.

Tatsuya leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, tilted his chin up the tiniest fraction like he was doing it for kicks and not because it was either that or talk to the other guy’s collarbone.

“Let me guess, most people just see you and give up?” 

The giant licked the hard-won cluster of corn-flakes-and-cream off his spoon and made a sort of vague “mmmhm” sound which Tatsuya accurately chose to translate as ‘no shit.’

“Well, I lived in the States for a while. So I guess I’m used to everyone being bigger than me. You know, my old school had a guy who was 203 centimeters.”

Now Tatsuya usually got a lot of mileage out of stories about America. People would say ‘Oh wow! That’s so cool!’ and then ask him the same boring questions about blonde girls and movie stars and whether it was scary to live in a place without proper gun control. But at least that was half a conversation sorted. Usually.

The giant only shrugged and said “I’m taller than that.”

“Oh yeah? How tall are you?” 

“208.” 

Tatsuya did a little quick math in his head( because what the fuck, metric system). That was like 6 foot 10. _Damn_.

“And you’re in... university?” Tatsuya mentally patted himself on the back for being diplomatic. That would probably go over better than ‘Are you a NEET or something? Why the hell were you napping on the street court at 7pm on a school night?’ 

“...high school..” was the mumbled reply, in between between biting off the side-dish octopus-cookie’s tentacles one by one. 

“Oh,” OK, so younger than he’d thought. Tatsuya would have guessed late-teens-early twenties, but maybe it was just the serious eyebags the guy was rocking. It looked like even _sleep_ was scared of him. “third year?”

“..first.” 

That... that broke Tatsuya’s brain a little.

“Wait. Hold up. You’re _sixteen_? Seriously?” he found himself sitting up in surprise “Are you fucking kidding me?”

With careful deliberation the giant put down the tiny spoon. His already narrow eyes squinted into angry slits. His lower lip was dangerously close to pouting.

“I’m sixteen _and a half.”_

It was the pout that convinced Tatsuya. Everything about tonight rearranged itself in his head, like puzzle pieces falling into line in a totally different order.

_Christ_. 

Puberty had not pulled _any_ punches on this guy. This kid, really. 

And Tatsuya had 1) stolen his ball 2) treated him like one of the typical LA assholes when he was fresh out of middle school and probably just had trouble finding people to play one-on-one with (I mean for _glaringly obvious reasons._ But _still._ )

_He might be younger than my little brother._

Tatsuya decided he should really try to be a little more friendly from here on out. Dropping the arms-crossed tough-guy pose, leaning forward a little, he put on his dependable ‘casual’ smile.

“Actually, that looks pretty good. Can I try some?”

“ _No!_ ”

He said it with such an offended look, moving to cradle the three-quarters-empty glass protectively behind his massive forearms, that Tatsuya had to quickly choke down a laugh and hold his hands up in mock ‘surrender.’

“OK, OK. Not the sharing kind, I get it. So, what High School do you go to?” 

This got him an annoyed wrinkle of the upper lip and a sleepy glare. “The one that’s _closest to my house_. Quit asking me things while I’m eating.” 

Now Tatsuya had a whole toolkit for talking to people. It was system, really. Like anything - openers, follow-ups, conversation topics. A social swiss army knife. Get someone to talk about themselves (and face it, most people loved to talk about themselves) and you were halfway to hanging out on the regular.

He could already tell that his usual method was going to be completely useless with this guy. 

But luckily, unlike most people, where you had to analyze and guess and probe for what they needed, the boy sitting across from Tatsuya had already flat-out said what he wanted from him.

So Tatsuya sat there, quietly, and didn’t ask him questions while he was eating.

\- - -

Eventually, with an air of ritual, the other boy gave the parfait spoon a thorough parting lick and then carefully laid it along the top of the empty glass.

“So.” Tatsuya said brighty, “Can I ask you questions now?” 

A shrug. “I guess.” 

Tatsuya had been going back and forth on his admittedly shaky grasp of the neighborhood, but the only high school around here was...“Seirin then? You go to Seirin?”

“Uh-huh. Same as you.”

How the hell did he know that? True, his first day Tatsuya had been a little busy scoping out the teachers and trying not to commit the cardinal transfer-student sin of walking into the wrong homeroom, but how the heck had he managed to miss a pushing-seven-feet first-year looking in his direction? So much for his supposed ‘city instincts.’ Maybe they were still back in Akita, catching the next train down. 

“Was it good?” Tatsuya asked, pointing to the empty glass, mostly to keep the conversation going.

“Yeah...they should have put less balsamic vinegar in the sauce though-“ he seemed to catch himself, squinting suspiciously “I’m not telling you ‘thanks’ or anything. You stole my ball so you owed me.”

Jeez, he really _was_ a kid fresh out of middle school. 

“I wasn’t expecting it.” 

Abruptly his eyes, which had been mostly looking at a point two inches to the left of Tatsuya’s ear whenever he bothered to look up at all, focused on his face. 

Tatsuya felt a jolt run through him. Some of that crushing pressure he’d felt back on the court was back, like a very localized freak weather front. 

_OK,_ he thought _overgrown kid or not, he’s still a little scary after all._

Not to brag too much, but Tatsuya was used to being looked at. People usually liked looking at him and that was fine, that was useful. But just then, he felt distinctly and uncomfortably _seen_. 

Maintaining eye-contact like they were playing some kind of epic stare-off chicken the giant first-year leaned across the table.

Tatsuya’s feet were frozen to the floor. But even if he could have moved, he wouldn’t have. Maybe it was his own inner 10-year-old, not wanting to lose.

Closer, closer, a little closer and the tips of their noses would touch. 

_What’s the hell is this now? It’s almost like…_

A 100% super-crazy thought went through his head: _Is he going to kiss me?_

“Next time, bring your own ball.” The purple-haired nightmare boy said, his lips three inches from Tatsuya’s, and with a loud backwards scrape of the cafe chair and three long strides to the door he was gone.

\- - -

The door jangled shut, leaving Tatsuya alone with his weirdly elevated heart rate, the empty parfait glass, and the girl behind the cafe counter who had completely ignored the whole exchange with the practiced indifference of someone trapped on the graveyard shift in food-service hell. 

_Okaaay, what even. What is this whole night?_

And what the hell did he mean by ‘next time?’ Tatsuya was _not_ doing that again. Not for love or money. There was a limit to his own personal streak of masochism and mostly-fruitless flailing against a human wall had to be it. 

Though another voice was whispering devil’s advocate: _What if I played that guy every day? I’d get stronger wouldn’t I?_

He cut it off. _Or I’d have no confidence left at all._

Still kind of in a daze, Tatsuya picked up the empty parfait glass and the spoon and carried them over to the ‘Dishes’ bin by the counter. 

"Excuse me,” he said to the girl “the person I was talking to just now..."

God bless the Japanese language. It had all kinds of fun points where you could just leave a sentence dangling instead of having to spell shit out. Still to make things even clearer Tatsuya also gave her his best look of 'Back me up here Miss, I didn't hallucinate him, right?'

The counter girl seemed to perk up a little from her stupor. Tatsuya would have happily taken credit for this, but he was sweaty and his hair was probably a mess, just really not at his fighting best right then. He had a terrible suspicion that his eyeliner had smudged.

"Oh, that's just Murasakibara-kun! I'm sorry if he was being troublesome, I guess we’re all kind of used to him. You must have caught his eye though, he doesn’t usually talk to strangers!"

_Aha_. 

So not just a first-year in high school but actually 100% a real person. Visible to other people, with a family name and everything. Though it was a slightly ridiculous family name. Sometimes Tatsuya had to acknowledge that _his_ last name was a little dramatic, but a 'Murasakibara' sounded like a fairy tale monster. Like, a legit youkai - something that hung around the courts at night and made you feel bad about your basketball skills. 

Which, technically, the boy he’d met kind of was.

_Well well, day six in Tokyo and I’ve already met some of the local mythology. Luckily, I now know that he can be bribed with ice cream._

Thinking this, Tatsuya waved ‘bye’ to the girl and stepped out of the cafe. 

He was seriously wrung out, but in a good way - a tired body and a clean head. No matter where his thoughts had been drifting earlier, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about getting to sleep tonight. 

It was really dark now, the sky inky-blue between the buildings overhead. The streetlights were spaced far apart. Still, if he squinted he could see a very tall shadow plodding up the hill in the distance. 

_Well, thanks for the match, I guess._ He smiled wryly. _And for not breaking my legs._

\- - -

And yet, by the time he got back to the apartment a new kind of restlessness had gotten hold of him. 

Tatsuya had always been more suspicious than superstitious by nature. ‘Destiny’ was for fiction. ‘Fated encounters’ were a lazy writing trope for romance drama. God wasn’t real, and if he was, the only things Tatsuya had for him were some choice words about unequal talent distribution and a fist to the gut.

But the Goddess of Basketball was... a thing. A story he’d heard when he was a kid that he could never quite shake. Those two things from his childhood, the Goddess and the Game were the closest thing he had to a faith.

And something _significant_ had happened tonight, hadn’t it? Without thinking he’d made a wish and the Goddess had sent someone. He’d passed some kind of test, he was sure of it. But what did it mean? And what the hell was he supposed to do next?

There was really only one person he could ask about any of this, only one person he could talk to about literally anything. 

Trouble was, in the process of righteously tearing down his old life he’d frozen her out too.

Still, he wanted to know, he wanted to tell someone. 

And as someone who used to just take off for half a month without telling anyone, as someone who used to get into fights too, she’d probably be more understanding about half a year of radio silence than 99% of any other adults he’d ever met. 

Tatsuya took a breath, he flipped open his old laptop, with it’s bloom of pixel-burn in the left hand corner, opened an email tab and began to type before he lost his nerve. 

‘Dear Alex,

Hey, how have you been these past eight months? So, I’ve moved to Tokyo. Please forward my non-existent mail. Also if you could maybe _not_ hate me for not writing sooner, that would be big of you. 

Since the last time I saw you a couple of things have happened. 

For one thing I stuck out seven months in this fancy international boarding school. But then the uniform had this corny-ass sweater, and the pants were _plaid_ and, look, there were a couple other heavy mitigating factors. Anyway, I had to get out of there. 

I guess that’s as much as I’m comfortable saying. Sorry. Typical me, isnt it? 

But Tokyo is being good to me so far. They’ve got actual Spring down here, cherry blossoms everywhere. I probably filled up a gig on my phone already, taking pictures like some cliche tourist. I’ll attach some, in case you want to see it.

Don’t worry, I’ve got a place to stay. You could even say it’s mine by birthright. Remember the old family apartment I mentioned? It’s peaceful. Quiet. Nobody getting in my face.

Yeah it’s a little unconventional, living alone at my age but let’s be real I’ve been ‘living alone’ for years haven’t I? I really think this is the best option for me. So don’t freak out, allright? I promise I’m eating my vegetables.

Actually if anything, it’s you I’m worried about. Just because it’s getting warm over there now doesn’t mean you should start drinking Pacifico before noon, OK? _I_ may be a lost cause but you should still set a good example for Taiga.

Anyway, today I met a boy. Wait, I know what you’re thinking but it’s absolutely not like that. I’d describe him to you but he sounds fictional any way you put it, so I guess I’ll have to send you a picture at some point. 

Apparently he goes to my school...‘

Tatsuya left off, the cursor blinking on the screen.

_Wait._

He felt like he’d been struck by lightning in the nicest way possible. Crystallizing in his head was a single, brilliant idea.

Was Murasakibara in the basketball club? He _had_ to be in the basketball club. That was years and years of experience he’d run up against. It would be a colossal waste, zero pun intended. 

Nevermind if he was or not. Tatsuya would get him there if he had to fucking drag him. If he had to jury-rig some weirdly-flavored parfait at the end of a very long fishing pole. Or maybe chips? That would definitely be less messy and from the contents of his sports-bag it seemed like Murasakibara was pretty into chips...

His thoughts were racing: _Oh my God though. Me on offense, that guy on defense, a few decent players to fill out the rest of the team..._

_We would fucking_ annihilate _the middle bracket. And probably make a King or two cry while we’re at it._

Tatsuya flopped back on the plastic-wrapped mattress, wriggling his toes a little in unholy glee at the prospect of watching _other players who_ _weren’t him_ run up against Murasakibara’s defense and fall into an endless, yawning pit of despair. 

Man, oh man. He had a fucking _strategy_. He had plans. The pieces were falling together and he could see it - the way he could make the whole Seirin thing _work_. 

Speaking of. Reaching into his messenger bag, he plucked out the Seirin Basketball Club application and with sure, decisive strokes began to fill it out.

Here was the thing - this whole past week Tatsuya had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the down phase to hit. To maybe start seriously freaking out about what he’d done - just taking off in the middle of the night, throwing himself to the wind. But days kept passing and even though his phone had steadily started chirping with texts from former classmates (texts that he didn’t answer - better to make a clean break, better to become a local mystery than to have to explain himself) it hadn’t happened. 

Against all common sense, in that moment, he felt OK. Maybe a little… hopeful? Not that he’d ever tell.

But maybe, for once, he was doing the right thing.

Maybe he really had been meant to come back here. 

If anything, tonight had proved it. There really were things in Tokyo that you couldn’t find anywhere else on Earth.

 

 

~


	6. Captain Hyuuga's Problems Intensify

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a short, cute omake-esqu chapter, but I love writing Hyuuga and outsider POV so I couldn't resist.

"Ummm, guys? So I went in, and then there was, umm... this really _incredibly_ _scary_ super-tall guy and-"

Hyuuga rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Yes Koga, we know."

Slowly, the way a determined protagonist in a horror movie might open the door to a dark, undeniably-haunted basement, Hyuuga Junpei turned the knob of the Seirin High School locker room door and cracked it open.

Murasakibara was standing in the corner, looming. 

To be fair Hyuuga wasn't sure if it was possible for him _not_ to loom when standing next to things meant for ordinary humans. But nothing fixed the way that the lockers which ended a good 10cm above Hyuuga's own head barely came up to Murasakibara's chin. 

Hyuuga still wanted to turn around and briskly run-walk to the other end of the school (possibly, to the other end of the prefecture) but, as Captain, this was clearly his moment to set an example. To establish his authority. He was extra conscious of the press of bodies against his back, Koga and Izuki’s eyes boring into him, the trio of reasonably-sized first-years peering from behind their shoulders like newborn chicks.

Squaring his shoulders, he cleared his throat. 

Murasakibara did absolutely nothing. 

No, wait, he reached into his ragged old sports bag, pulled out a linty-looking Pocky stick and swallowed it in one bite. It crunched piteously somewhere in his vast mouth.

Behind Hyuuga's back, one or more of the reasonably-sized first-years may have whimpered in fright.

And then he heard another sound. Footsteps. Turning around he saw something that made his stomach twinge for the second time: the goddamned _ikemen_ in full sail - clear skin, perfectly pressed uniform, his bangs still combed annoyingly over his left eye. Without so much as a by-your-leave he waltzed past Hyuuga into the locker room and then COMPLETELY FAILED TO REACT IN ANY SORT OF NORMAL FASHION.

Spotting Murasakibara he, actually, seriously seemed to _perk up_.

“Oh hey, _there_ you are! I’ve been looking all over.” he said brightly, dropping his sports bag (purple with pink edges, oh, right, he used to go to another school) next to Murasakibara’s and matter-of-factly opening the locker next to his.

Murasakibara turned his head to regard the intruder who had suddenly appeared at his left shoulder.

Hyuuga felt the guys behind him collectively holding their breath.

Murasakibara made a flat sort of ‘...hnnn’ humming sound at the back of his throat. On some other planet it might have vaguely counted as a greeting. Then, completely ignoring everything and everyone he turned back to his bag and ate another Pocky stick. 

_HUH?! What?_

No grisly massacre? No Alpha-male posturing? 

They were...They were…just peacefully standing next to each other! The _ikemen_ toeing off his school shoes. Weirdly enough, Murasakibara had not only shown up earlier than everyone he was already dressed and ready for practice.

Turning back over his shoulder, the bastard ikemen made a big show of noticing all the people still clustered in the doorway _even though he absolutely must have seen them on the way in_. He gave them all a clearly amused once-over and then raised his hand up in an ever-so-casual wave. 

Hyuuga felt a blood vessel begin to throb in his temple. 

“How the hell do you two know each other?!” 

~


	7. First Practice, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGH, too much IRL nonsense happening lately, but have an update~~~
> 
> lol Himuro your bi is showing >__>
> 
> (Also it's my birthday so if anyone wants to make my day... leave a comment anywhere on this fic!)

The sun was shining, it was a beautiful day. Practice hadn’t even started and he was already pissing off his new Captain, but that last part was just so incredibly easy that Tatsuya couldn’t help himself. 

Also Murasakibara was there. And he hadn’t even had to track him down! He was right where he wanted him, zero fuss and so far, zero leverage required. Clearly, Tatsuya might have to play interpreter between Muraskibara and the general (and slightly chickenshit, I mean crowding in the doorway? _really?_ ) population but, well, it was a small price to pay.

Oh wait, he’d been breezily ignoring the Captain’s question for a while now, hadn’t he? 

_Oops_. 

“Actually I’d like to know too, how _do_ you guys know each other? Didn’t you transfer from someplace up North?” chimed in some guy standing over the sputtering Captain’s shoulder. OK, ‘some guy’ was kind of cute - good cheekbones, glossy black hair, grey eyes...

_Ha! That’s a little narcissistic of me isn’t it?_

“Oh, I think he lives down the street from my building. We kind of ran into each other last night on the public court. Crazy coincidence, isn’t it?” Tatsuya replied directly to Mr. Gray-Eyes, bypassing Hyuuga entirely. There was just _something_ about Hyuuga that made you want to mess with him. He reacted too much, to everything. Some people couldn’t do a poker face to save their lives. Tatsuya pitied them.

Clearly he was going to have to extend that to the whole locker room. Pretty much everyone was goggling at him like he’d just confessed to tiger-wrestling as a hobby.

“So you guys…” Mr Gray-Eyes’ eyebrow crept steadily up his forehead like he couldn’t believe what he was actually saying “what, hung out? Played some one-on-one?”

Tatsuya nodded, trying not to smirk. He enjoyed a captive audience from time to time and he definitely had one now. All around the locker room guys had stopped even pretending not to eavesdrop. He could just about see the thought bubbles floating above their heads, bubbles that mostly said ‘And you’re _alive?!’_

“Yeah! It was pretty tough though,” he went on, smiling his ‘oh, it’s no big deal’ smile, eating up the impressed looks on all their faces. “he’s really good at defense.”

Still, on the inside he felt a bit of a twinge. Talking about someone while they were literally right there was a little shady, but Murasakibara didn’t seem inclined to contribute to the conversation. He just loomed over Tatsuya’s shoulder, ignoring the hell out of everyone, peacefully twisting and un-twisting his now-empty Pocky wrapper into the shape of a butterfly. 

\- - -

Of course the peace couldn’t last.

Tatsuya had no goddamn idea how, on the way to the center of the gym( given that everyone was still giving the two of them a wide berth) he managed to lose a nearly-Shaq-sized freshman. But one second Murasakibara was plodding along beside him and the next he wasn’t there.

Instead, he was making a beeline for one of the regulars, a decently-tall guy with a done-at-home haircut whom vaguely Tatsuya remembered from the club table at the activity fair. Standing right behind him was one of the smaller guys who’d been handing out the flyers. 

There was something about that particular boy, his extra-flat nose and a slightly cleft upper lip, along with a permanent case of resting-half-grin, that made you think of a cat. Tatsuya could see cat-boy visibly brace himself, come to a decision, and then step firmly in front of his friend like a very short, ineffective shield. 

Ballsy, he had to give him that. 

“Umm, hey… My name’s Koganei Shinji, and this is Mitobe. Was there something you wanted?”

“You're the one who plays Center, right?” Murasakibara said to Mitobe, completely over cat-boy’s head, no ‘Hi,’ no nothing. 

Tatsuya seriously wanted to facepalm. _JFC, no. Stop. That’s not how you make a first impression. You realize we have to play_ with _these guys later, right?_ It was both humbling and troubling to realize that yesterday he may have actually gotten the _higher_ end of Murasakibara’s questionable people skills. 

Mitobe, who now looked painfully average-sized by comparison, didn't say anything but his face went through a complicated series of expressions. He nodded, cautiously. 

“Mitobe says ‘yes’” Koganei piped up. 

Murasakibara finally seemed to notice him, squinting down the end of his long nose. 

“Does he not talk?” he asked with all the social grace of a hammer. 

Koganei frowned, he straightened up to his full height (somewhere around Tatsuya’s ear. Like, sorry dude - you’re short) and took a deep breath, like an alley cat psyching itself up to scare away a bigger predator.

“Mitobe does just fine without talking. We’ve been friends for a long time so I talk for him.” 

Murasakibara tilted his head in an obvious ‘I’m processing this’ gesture. Then, in what was really becoming a pattern, he did something goddamn weird: he pulled a Sharpie out of the pocket of his shorts, scribbled something on the vast palm of his hand and held it up to Mitobe’s face at eye-level.

Tatsuya, who had sidled up to this whole scene just in case he needed to interfere, managed to catch a glimpse of the message. Murasakibara’s handwriting was exactly as messy as you’d expect and he had to guess at one of the kanji but it basically said:

if you wanna keep playing Center, you're gonna have to fight me for it +

Mitobe blanched. He shook his head sideways, an unmistakable ‘No.’

Murasakibara nodded in a satisfied ‘my work is done here’ sort of way and then, judging the interaction to be over, simply turned around and walked away.

_Christ on a longboard. What am I going to do with goddamn walking PR disaster of a boy?_

Okaaay. Damage control time. Good thing he did a good ‘friendly’ face.

“Hey guys! Look, I don’t mean step in. I mean, I just met him yesterday, and this is gonna sound crazy, but I don't think he meant that in a bad way. I think he’s just not great with new people. I’ve noticed-” Tatsuya leaned in conspiratorially “-that he’s a little odd.”

Mitobe blinked at him, in what Tatsuya could already kinda-sorta tell was an ‘understanding’ fashion. Koganei, still puffed up in full BFF-Defense-Mode, looked like he was about to say something. From the look on his face Tatsuya figured it would be some polite Japanese equivalent of ‘Dude, “he’s a little odd” is the Understatement of the Year,’ but they were interrupted by a sharp whistle from the front. 

It was the girl, the Important Girl. Important Girl was also, apparently, the Coach. 

She had a clipboard and a no-nonsense expression and when she opened her mouth she yelled something that made even Tatsuya want to do a double take.

“OK! Line up and take off your shirts!”

_...Huh?!_

\- - -

“Oi, is she for real?”

He whispered to Koganei, who had ended up next to him in the ‘Let’s all take off our shirts for this girl’ lineup. Tatsuya had been at a party like that once. He didn’t remember most of it but he’d woken up in a bathtub with said girl’s phone number which meant that he’d probably ‘won.’

“Actually, yeah. She did this last year too, don’t ask me how but she can see what you need for training menus and stuff.” 

Allright, whatever. Let’s see what you can do Miss Daughter of a Pro Athlete Trainer. He wasn’t going to look a source of valuable information in the mouth.

Whatever else Aida Riko was, she sure had her guys trained to the reign. The regulars didn’t even hesitate. _Oh well,_ Tatsuya thought with amusement, pulling off his long-sleeved v-neck _ten years, two hemispheres, and I’m three-for-three for eccentric woman coaches. It’s almost enough to make a guy believe in Fate._

And while usually it took the end of a date (or a really good beat at the club) for him to take his shirt off in front of a stranger, he pulled out the poker face and ruthlessly crushed any little creeping feelings of vulnerability. Besides, the Regular-Sized-Trio was plenty embarrassed for everyone - blushing and stammering cutely at the front of the line.

Meanwhile, next to him, Murasakibara seemed to have completely missed the memo and was doing his best to nap standing up.

Tatsuya rolled his shoulders, well if he was at the tail end like this at least he could subtly check out the competition.

Not bad, not bad. Above-average all of them. Cute Guy(what was his last name? Izu-something? Izuki?) had a nice runner’s build. 

The first-years were weedy as shit though - sharp collarbones, visible ribs. What the hell were they even doing here? Well, he’d been like that himself once, years and years ago. 

Hyuuga, of all people, surprised him by having a really nice set of shoulders. Could Hyuuga count as cute? Tatsuya rolled it around in his brain and thought - _maybe_. At least he could be if he lost the glasses and someone stepped up and kissed that sour grandpa expression off his face. Still a priss though. _Such_ a priss. But that meant messing with him could be fun in a whole other way.

Look, it wasn’t like anyone could read his scandalous gay thoughts off his face and he figured a little harmless speculation could be forgiven. Tragically, it had been months since Tatsuya had a date that ended with anything and nearly a full year since the last time he’d kissed another guy. 

Lost in his head he almost missed it: when Coach was standing in front of Hyuuga, looking him up and down there was...something. This _vibe_. This very repressed Romantic Period Drama vibe. Tatsuya’s gossip senses were suddenly on high alert. _What do we have here? A crush?_ Him on her. Yeah, _definitely_. She was obviously too cool for Hyuuga, too focused on her job. 

Though Coach was certainly ‘checking things out’ for herself, if her expression was anything to go by. In all fairness she _did_ simultaneously seem to be giving the guys she ogled good advice.

Looking around they all just seemed so clean-cut, so sheltered, so _soft_ compared to the LA kids - no piercings, no tattoos anywhere. He was the only one with hard arms and visible abs. The only one with scars. For just one, bad moment, Tatsuya felt old.

And then the Coach finally got to him and came to a gratifying stop. Her eyes went wide, her mouth fell open a little.

She really _was_ pretty up close, in that unconventional way that he liked. Even her short Joan-of-Arc haircut really worked on her, though Tatsuya usually liked it longer. And now Japan with its stupid homophobic bullshit had cut his dating pool in half and conveniently herded him back into the closet… For a moment he was seriously tempted.

No way he could date his Coach though. Way too many issues there. And he couldn’t just ignore what he’d seen. No matter what any of the rumors had said about him, Tatsuya had never poached anyone’s crush on purpose.

Still, he couldn’t resist flirting a little. “Well Coach, any advice for me? Should I turn around?” 

She straightened up, caught, but then her chocolate brown eyes turned steely. 

“I’ll be frank, your stats are outstanding. But you’re almost pushing your body too hard, aren’t you? Take your rest days more seriously and step up your caloric intake-” 

_Ouch, a compliment, but with salt. Fair enough, though._ Alex had told him as much. And Masako-san, before.

“-and if you want to be a regular here Himuro-kun, you better quit smoking. _Today_.”

_Shit._

_How the fuck did she know?_ He’d been trying to make his one pack last, ever-so-careful to keep the cigarette smell out of his school clothes.

So OK, yeah. Sign him up for the Church of Aida Riko: Miracle Body Analyst. It was like she’d dumped a bucket of ice water on his head. Respect.

“I suppose I could do that,” he said nonchalantly. “I don’t have the budget for it anyway.”

And then there was only one more person left in line.

Coach came to a stop in front of him and tapped her foot on the floor impatiently.

Murasakibara peered down at her. You could fit a whole other person in between the top of her head and the top of his. Tatsuya’s fingers itched for a camera. “Do I have to?” he mumbled sleepily. 

“Yes, yes you do.” 

“...ugh. _Fiiine_.” Murasakibara’s thick fingers fumbled with the bottom of his ratty old T-shirt.

_OK. No. Nope._ Tatsuya thought. _Don’t even look._

_Reason Number One: You remember last night, right? He’s a solid fucking wall. 10 inches and at least 50 lbs on you. You’ll just feel bad about yourself._

_Reason Number Two: Your thoughts are a little meat-market-y right now so let’s not sexually objectify the kid who was in_ middle school _last month, OK? Bad form. Don’t do it bro._

So Tatsuya kept his eyes turned firmly away, even when the gasps started. In front of him Aida Riko’s eyes went saucer-wide.

“Holy shit!” she squeaked, and then immediately slapped her hand to her mouth. 

That really was the problem with Tatsuya’s personality - he never was that good at following rules. Even the ones he set for himself. He looked left, and up.

_A museum._ Was the first thing he thought. _He should be in a museum._

_Like a statue of Ares or something._ _This boy is a weapon of war._

And then his actual thinking brain kicked in. _Why though? Why are you like this? Your body and your personality don’t add up_ at all _. Some fucking demon had to be driving you into the weight room that often, to run that many miles to end up looking like that._

_I want to know. I want to know the reason._

In the end, the only thing Tatsuya could do was try not to be creepy and just look at his face. 

Still, there was something kind of sad about watching Murasakibara’s sleepy expression go blank and guarded and kinda frightening as everyone gaped at him. Something sad about the soft-looking ends of his hair clinging to his massive neck. 

“Um… you’re actually a little underweight.” Coach said eventually, still gnawing on her knuckles.

“Huuu-uh?” Murasakibara crossed his arms over his chest. Everything kind-of _rippled_. Yeah, Tatsuya thought, suddenly dry-mouthed, good thing he’d decided not to sexually objectify the guy or anything. _Good fucking thing._

“Don’t see how.” he said flatly “I eat snacks all the time.”

“ _Oh my God_ , no! Puffed rice and corn starch is NOT enough. You boys have _no idea_ about proper nutrition, I swear!” In her indignation Coach actually poked Murasakibara’s abs with a finger. Girl was fearless or crazy or probably both. “You need balanced meals! More vegetables and meat or you’ll never grow properly and reach your full potential! _Errr_ -” She seemed to re-realize who she was talking to.

“‘Kay, I’m gonna stick to chips then.” Murasakibara said solemnly, shrugging his shirt back on. “If I grow any more I won’t fit on the train.”

He kind of had her there. 

Coach looked pretty stumped. For a split second she had that same kind of ‘Are you trolling me right now or do you actually mean this stuff when you say it?’ look that Tatsuya must have been sporting for half of last night, then she shook herself like a dog and moved on, tapping her pen against her clipboard decisively.

“OK, you know what? I’ll deal with nutrition when I assemble individual menus tonight. And _all of you-_ “ Tatsuya winced, she was totally giving him the hairy eye “-better read that part as religiously as the reps!”

She put her whistle to her mouth again and blew it.

“Allright! Everyone put your shirts back on and grab a jersey. We’re going to play a little practice game!” She smirked. “Old vs. New.”


	8. First Practice, Part Two

After a some heated whispering between Coach and Hyuuga, Coach ducked back into the locker room, came out with an oversized practice jersey with the number ‘7’ on it and handed it to Murasakibara. He stared down at it with an unreadable expression before slowly pulling it on. To Tatsuya’s honest surprise it actually fit him, not perfectly but well enough that he could move around. Oh right, they’d lost their old Center, it was probably _his_ practice jersey. But the fact that it fit… he must have been an impressive guy in his own right.

While the regulars formed an easy cluster on their side of the court, pairing off to do warm up stretches and whatever, Tatsuya surveyed what he had to work with: the Regular-Sized Trio, and Murasakibara. _Yikes_. Talk about an unbalanced roster. 

Look it wasn’t their fault the other first-years been kind of wasting their lives instead of learning to ball better. I mean, it _was_. But these were the cards Tatsuya was dealt and he was going to do his damndest to show up Hyuuga and Co. anyway. Luckily, he already had a plan. 

Which was good since he seemed to be the only one. Murasakibara was back to looking 75% asleep. The Trio were milling around nervously, edging away from Murasakibara while trying not to look like they were edging away from Murasakibara. 

This was gonna be just like the times he helped Alex run practices at her summer program. _Just think of them as a better class of ten-year-old and you’ll be fine._

Luckily, getting control of a group and becoming the de-facto leader was often as easy as being the first one to speak up. Tatsuya coughed into his fist and tried to remember how to do his best ‘gentle-but-firm Assistant Teacher’ voice.

“Ok, huddle up!”

The first years’ heads swung his way, they circled around.

“Yes, you too.” he motioned Murasakibara closer like he was an oversized stray cat. “Come on.”

“So, first: the bad news! They’re going to have superior coordination from playing together all of last year. Let’s just accept that and move on.

But hey, good news: we have someone who’s great at defense so that takes a lot of the pressure off of us. Meanwhile they’re over there thinking ‘we gotta see how much we’ve improved after break’, ‘we gotta impress the Coach’, ‘we gotta show the newbies who’s boss’ etc. etc.

Honestly, that’s too many goals. We, on the other hand, have just one, simple goal: _win_.”

They were nodding along, listening (well, at least the Trio, Murasakibara was just sort of staring at him). He had them. _Not bad, not bad_. Now Tatsuya kinda saw himself as one of nature’s lone wolves(OK, with a short list of exceptions) but he _could_ do this Leader-y shit in a pinch.

“Besides, we have a psychological advantage. They think they’ll just steamroll over the four of us,” he glanced up at Murasakibara “- sorry to leave you out but I’m pretty sure no-one’s underestimating you - but anyway, when we show them that they can’t, it’ll really start messing with their heads. I’m sure Coach will sit up and take notice if we axe all her golden boys off at the knees~”

OK maaaybe that last bit was a little too mean-sounding. _Dial it back Tatsuya, dial it back a little._

As they were heading towards the line up, Furihata came up to him, his eyes darting nervously. It seemed like he’d somehow gotten elected as official spokesperson of the Trio. Which was surprising, honestly. Out of the three of them he seemed like the weakest link, like he was made out of Legos and any second he’d trip and wind up in pieces on the floor.

“I mean, they’re _starters,_ you know? Do you really think the three of us can do something?” Furihata asked, under his breath.

Tatsuya put on his best ‘I’m a serious senpai, trust me’ face and lied. 

“Absolutely, yeah.” 

Look, in some situations the truth was no fucking help at all. And at least Furihata looked less likely to throw up now.

It helped that it was a foregone conclusion that their side would get the ball in the tip-off. 

Murasakibara landed with an audible _thud_ and then casually rolled the ball behind his back and into Tatsuya’s waiting hands. Then he turned around and started walking, literally _walking,_ back down the court toward their basket.

Everyone froze.

“Umm, hey, the game’s _that_ way.” Tatsuya said, pointing helpfully with his index finger.

“I don’t wanna run. They’re not worth it.”

_Seriously?!_ Actually, no, that would work. For this particular game, anyway. And just walking away the opposition like they weren’t shit was a masterful Dick Move™. A+ psychological warfare. Except he was 99% sure Murasakibara wasn’t doing it on purpose. OK, maybe 95% sure.

_Since when do you not run though? You sure as hell didn’t just stand there when you were playing_ me _last night._

Whatever, he’d sort that out later. “Fine. Stay back there and hold down the fort.”

“‘Kay~” Murasakibara said absently around a yawn, “...you better score something.”

Tatsuya decided to take it as encouragement. 

“ _You_ better not let them get a single point.” he called back.

Not having to think about defense honestly freed him up a little, in his head. It was like one of those rook-protects-king maneuvers in chess, their side was pretty damn secure now and he could fully concentrate on attacking the enemy. 

And this, this was the fun part of playing with a new crowd: watching people be cautious about him, not knowing what he was all about yet. Watching Izuki and Hyuuga exchange worried looks as he took a step forward. They were probably trying to say ‘hey, let’s stop him together’ or something corny. 

_Good luck with that._

He charged in, got around Koganei, let Izuki and Hyuuga think he was going to go left (hooray for sobriety, his fakes worked again) and then smoothly stepped back over the three point line. They were confused just long enough to give him breathing room to sink the three.

Fast, clean. Just the way he liked it. 

He didn’t even have to say any macho shit. It had been like, 5 seconds and they were down already. The regulars’ eyes were wide. They were looking at him the way he deserved to be looked at. Like he was a threat.

Tatsuya smiled at them - one of his soft, polite smiles. 

_Hello. Here I am, motherfuckers. Pull up a seat._

\---

He was the first one back to their basket for defense ( _Seriously Coach, I hope you’re paying attention. Smoking or non-smoking, I’m faster than anyone else you’ve got right now_ ). However bored he’d looked earlier, Murasakibara was in position under the basket, doing a killer ‘YOU SHALL NOT PASS’ stance, his freakishly long arms out, fingers curled threateningly.

“So,” Tatsuya smirked as he skidded to a stop in front of him “is three points good enough for you?” 

“Tch.” Murasakibara blew a strand of his own hair out of his mouth. Tatsuya had a sneaking suspicion that he’d been chewing on it. “ _No way_. Come back when it’s ten points.” 

So something _was_ alive in there, other than shit social skills, a metric ton of apathy, and a monster craving for parfait. It seemed to be mostly attitude, but hey, Tatsuya kind of liked attitude. In the proper context.

“Now now, give me another couple minutes why don’t you?” he shot back playfully.

And then with the thunder and squeal of basketball shoes everyone was back over and Tatsuya had front-row tickets to The Seirin Regulars VS. An Almost Seven Foot Tall Nightmare Kid. It was pretty much the massacre he’d been hoping for. He almost wished he wasn’t in the game himself so that he could break out some popcorn and a lawn chair.

Eventually Murasakibara swatted someone’s shot out of the air like it was a fly at a picnic and Tatsuya, who’d been patiently waiting for that exact moment, sniped the ball and took off with it. 

_And a beautiful symbiotic relationship is born._

The regulars were a little more wise to him now so Tatsuya couldn’t get that same breathing room for a three, but he sank a nice, textbook one-handed jump shot a foot from the foul line and two points was two points. 

The Trio were staring at him in admiration. Hyuuga looked like you could fry an egg on his head. 

Too bad their momentum kind of stumbled after that. Look, he had to pass sometime. And feeling Coach’s sharp little eyes on the back of his practice jersey Tatsuya had an inkling that she wasn’t just watching his footwork. Right, this was his audition, so to speak. And the Ace wasn’t the Ace because they were an ego-crazed ball hog. So when he was in a tight spot, Tatsuya did the logical thing and passed to Kawahara, who was open. 

Kawahara passed it to Furihata, who almost dropped it, who passed it to the bald kid who tried to get past Mitobe and pretty much… couldn’t. Yeahhh, it was a circus. Sure the Trio was getting some valuable on-the-court lessons (‘beware the quiet ones’ was always a good one) but damned if Tatsuya didn’t want to facepalm. 

Let’s just say with Murasakibara for backup they were a lot more confident on defense.

\- - -

So OK, he had to hand it to the regulars in a pinch, even with the heavy weight of not having scored a single point, they came together. Hyuuga was an old-fashioned ‘lead from the front’ kind of Captain. It was nauseatingly… nauseating. 

Sure it would make Tatsuya’s job a lot easier if they just gave up, but on second thought - no. Nobody liked an opponent that just rolled over. You couldn’t play your best unless someone was trying to stop you just as desperately. 

And Hyuuga was damn persistent, not as fast as him but still hard to shake as a tail. Tatsuya had to be careful of he’d start respecting him a little. Strictly on the court anyway.

Still, looking at the regulars, how close-knit they were with each other… it left a bitter taste at the back of his mouth. 

_Why didn’t I ever run into a crew like this when I was a kid? When Taiga and I got too good for the half-pint crowd and tried to join other games all the older guys just wanted to bash our heads in_...

Anyway, in contrast the Regular Sized Trio was... bad. Just bad. They hesitated, their dribbling was sloppy, their passes wobbled like a girl in her highest heels after five shots of Jager. When Izuki stole the ball from Kawahara _again_ Tatsuya gritted his teeth around some choice f-bombs and ran his frustrated thoughts through about seven inner filters until they came out of his mouth nice and encouraging. 

Look, if Kawahara or Furihata or whatever-bald-kid’s-name-was had come out the gate being cocky he would have ripped them all a new one. But Alex had hammered it into his head that it was pointless to get mad at a beginner for being a beginner. They were outclassed and they knew they were outclassed. At least they kept running. 

In a tight spot Furihata even managed to get the ball to Kawahara who got the ball to _him_ where it belonged. Mitobe was a decent player, but Tatsuya’s new standard for Centers was now waaay over his head. Of course when he got past Mitobe Koganei was just freaking _there_. Those two were like a combo plate special. _Cute_. 

Still, it wasn’t quite enough. Tatsuya made like he was going to jump for the shot, Koganei fell for it, hissing like a cat when he realized he’d been tricked. As he was coming down Tatsuya actually went for it and sank another three.

Somebody, maybe Kawahara, whopped in the background. 

_Fucking-A kids, that’s how it’s done._

“Well it’s ten points _now_.” Tatsuya said sweetly, running past Murasakibara at the home court. “So you better keep your end up~~”

His survival instincts were really shit lately, given that they’d decided it was hilarious to keep pulling Murasakibara’s proverbial pigtails. ( _Is his hair long enough for pigtails?_ Tatsuya thought out of nowhere.) 

Murasakibara didn’t say anything back. But the look in his suddenly un-sleepy eyes said ‘...watch me.’

Tatsuya had no other choice. He basically couldn’t look away.

Murasakibara was a one man castle. Oh, they tried. They came at him all at once. Izuki did some pretty well-coordinated passing to blow past the Trio and then it was just the two of them versus the five regulars under the basket, Tatsuya trying to keep one guy isolated so they couldn’t use him for plays, the Trio cautiously keeping their distance. 

Koganei had an effective hook shot. Correction: what _would_ have been an effective hook shot against anyone else. 

It was useless - the regulars couldn’t do shit.

At one point Murasakibara made a bored-irritated sort of noise and just literally ripped the ball out of Mitobe’s hand as he went for a dunk. It was terrifying and awesome and Tatsuya will never admit that he almost didn’t catch the pass that Murasakibara then carelessly tossed in his direction, because _Jesus_ the handspan and the grip strength that he had to have to do that. 

I mean, getting a ball like that, Tatsuya had better fucking step up. He ran faster, his heart hammering in his chest.

As for the regulars’ defense, well, all Hyuuga could do was battlefield triage. 

At Hyuuga’s direction, they put two guys on him, and with some footwork and a sharp fake to the right Tatsuya weaseled out of it. Then they put three guys on him. Which was A Problem. 3-on-1 were shit odds, in a fight or pretty much anything else.

“All three of you just to stop me, huh? I’m flattered.” he said, all casual. If he couldn’t move the ball at least he could be a distraction, keep them focused on him and away from the rest of the game.

“You’re shut down is what you are.” Koganei quipped back. Dude was growing on him, at least he could shit-talk. 

“Yeah we’ve _iced-out_ Himuro for sure!” Said Izuki grinning brightly at the other defenders. They groaned. Izuki legit chortled to himself like he was 50-something father of four. 

Tatsuya really _was_ frozen for a moment there. Was that a fucking _pun_? _Like, for real?_

“Errrr, what do we do now, Himuro-senpai?” Furihata stuttered somewhere over his shoulder. 

“There’s three of you versus two of them. Even if they’re more experienced those aren’t bad odds. So try something. Do _literally_ _anything_ , except give up!”

“Okay, r-right. Okay.” 

Furihata squared his shoulders and waded back into it.

And that’s when the Trio, like they were having their little featured bit in the movie montage(with a dramatic musical upswell and everything) started to suck A Little Bit Less. 

They still had a weird dynamic - the other two guys were stronger but Furihata seemed to run the group by being… nicer? More willing to approach people despite his blatantly obvious anxiety issues? Either way, Furihata was making the plays, directing Kawahara the bald kid around Mitobe and the totally-normal-looking regular. And they trusted his calls and went where he said, which was something. 

_Kid might even make a decent point guard one day._

It wasn’t an attack so much as a holding pattern, but everyone was getting tired now. Give them a stumble, an opening, and they might have broken through. 

Eventually Hyuuga saw what was happening dashed back to help with that whole situation, and that’s when Tatsuya winked at Koganei and made a run for it. 

\- - - 

As ‘typical’ games would go, this was so not it. 

Izuki, Koganei and Mitobe really hit their stride on defense and didn’t let them score at all in the last seven minutes. The Trio flailed around some more. Murasakibara refused to take a single step outside the three-point line. 

In the final countdown the best option, vaguely humiliating as it was, was for Tatsuya to pass the ball to Furihata, who, to everyone’s complete surprise, sank one wobbly layup before he smacked into Mitobe’s side and squeaked like a human chew toy.

Whatever. Even the future Ace couldn’t score every point. He’d take it.

The final score was 12-0. 

Coach blew the whistle. 

Tatsuya valiantly _did not_ grin like a shark. He figured being gracious about it would be a lot better for him in the long run.

At least the Trio was cheering loudly, Furihata at the front, his fluffy bangs plastered to his forehead with sweat. Though his expression sank a little when he turned back to Tatsuya.

“Himuro-senpai, I… I feel like we didn’t earn that. You and Murasakibara-kun pretty much did everything.”

“Well the 0 was mostly him, that’s true. But we all worked for that 12, OK? We made the plan happen. Chins up, all of you.” 

“Yeah!” Furihata beamed. 

Tatsuya may have smiled back, in a restrained, mature way of course. Hey, at least someone here thought he was cool.

He looked down the court.

Now that the action was over Murasakibara was still standing under the basket staring out at the empty floor - like them winning hadn’t even blipped on his radar, like it didn’t mean anything.

Tatsuya tried not to take it personally. Murasakibara was an amazing defensive player but he had some stuff going on with his head, clearly. It was ironic, wasn’t it? For someone with such hella presence, he wasn’t 100% there all the time.

_Are you just like that, or did something happen?_ he thought.

It was super not any of his business but Tatsuya had this feeling, like maybe it was more column B than column A. But you couldn’t fix other people’s shit _for_ them. 

In the meantime he jogged over, just to make sure they wouldn’t like, leave him there, now that practice was mostly over. 

“See? Told you we could win.” he said. “What are you looking at anyway?”

Murasakibara blinked at him slowly. He seemed to be back in a lower gear than where he’d been all game.

“Nothin’” he drawled. “You’re all sweaty, it’s gross.”

Ha! Said the guy whose hair was damp at the roots. Little drops of sweat were still sliding down the side of his throat.

Tatsuya shrugged. “I agree. The whole ‘sweat’ thing is an unfortunate side-effect.” 

And, yeah, he probably didn’t want to smell himself right then either

They’d really made him run, the regulars. Of course a lot of it was covering for the Trio’s mistakes and for Murasakibara acting like the floor outside the three point line was made of lava. But Tatsuya felt like he understood a little more about Seirin’s starters now. They weren’t just some ‘token underdog’ team who got lucky one year.

Seeing them play he could believe that they’d scraped their way pretty far up the bracket on their own steam. Not far enough to count for a title, but hey, he knew what that was like.

Which was probably Coach’s whole reason for making them play this practice game, now that he really thought about it. To get him to realize Hyuuga wasn’t just Captain because he could make serious!face and bark orders at people. To get Hyuuga to realize that people underestimated Tatsuya at their own fucking peril. 

Coach really had a head on her, for sure. Sure, the setup was a little mindgame-y but Tatsuya would have probably done the same thing in her position. 

_She’s probably trying to forestall conflict since I was an SG at Yosen._ He should set the record straight on that ASAP. Hyuuga could keep it. Tatsuya’s mostly one-man-offense show back there ought to convince Coach that he could play Power Forward, no problem... 

Anyway, he was getting a little too into his head. If anyone was looking their way now they’d see _two_ guys standing under the basket like a pair of statues. 

Tatsuya fished around in his brain for the appropriate Japanese phrase, something that would get his point across but wouldn’t sound patronizing.

“Thanks for your hard work.” he said eventually. He even meant it. “We would have been in trouble without you.”

Murasakibara squinted down at him like he was deciding whether to believe him or not. 

“ _Whatever._ That was mostly boring and I’m tired now.”

He sat down heavily - it was like watching a skyscraper collapse in slow motion. 

Scratching at the back of his sweat-dampened head, completely ignoring his surroundings Murasakibara lay flat on the floor, limbs spread out like a starfish and closed his eyes. 

_Unbeilevable._

“ _Dude_. Are you seriously going to sleep here?”

“Dunno. I might.” 

He was probably/definitely testing Tatsuya’s boundaries, or whatever. Some people just did stuff like this when they met you for the first time. To see how much you’d let them get away with. Not like Tatsuya was intimately familiar with that or anything.

“We better get back over there. Coach is giving us a look like we’ll get in trouble.” he tried.

“...” 

Tatsuya crossed his arms. 

“If you don’t want to walk, I guess I could just drag you over.”

“..as if...” 

Tatsuya felt a vein start to pulse in his forehead.

_OK big guy, huge mistake on your part. I have terrible impulse control and a pretty badass deadlift record. Ergo, you are fucking going down._

“OK then, brace yourself.” 

Fake-spitting on his hands Tatsuya leaned down and wrapped two hands around the other boy’s ankle, which again, was like, thick as an average guy’s arm. That was the thing. You saw Murasakibara from far away and you were like ‘OK, a literal fucking giant, I get it’ but then up close his size ambushed you all over again. 

His skin was warm to the touch, Tatsuya’s hands were a couple shades paler.

Tatsuya pulled. 

For a second it seemed like absolutely nothing was going to happen and he was just going to look really stupid. Which was unacceptable, so he pulled harder. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, Murasakibara’s long torso began to slide across the floor. Tatsuya hefted his leg under his arm like a proud fisherman who’d got the catch of his life and began what he hoped was a slow, dignified walking pace back to center of the court.

On the minus side, the sweat situation was going to get worse before it got better. 

On the plus side, Murasakibara was looking up at him making an actual expression again: confused surprise mixed with something else. 

“What’s with that face, huh? I told you I could.” Tatsuya said cheerfully, with a little edge to it. 

_You get me now? I’ll only let you push me so far before I push back._

Oh it was _such_ a struggle to keep his breathing even, like he wasn’t fucking about to fall over. God this kid was heavy. Thank Christ it was only 40 more feet to the locker room door.

Of course now Tatsuya remembered that there were still other people in the gym. That they had an audience for this little stunt. Was it too late to hope nobody had noticed? 

Nope, there everyone was. Lined up. Staring at them like the circus had rolled in.

Oh well. Let the Legend of Himuro Tatsuya: Designated Giant Wrangler begin. 

“What the _freaking_ _heck_ is going on here?!” Hyuuga grumbled.

Coach was frantically scribbling something in her clipboard. Tatsuya hoped it was her adjusting his weightlifting regimen and not writing ‘two of my players are cray.’

“He said he didn’t feel like walking.” Tatsuya said breezily. Protip: if someone catches you doing something totally weird and ridiculous, just stay cool.

“And _you_ , what do you have to say for yourself?”

Murasakibara gave their new Captain one of his heavy, unreadable stares. Tatsuya could see fresh sweat break out on Hyuuga’s forehead.

“...this floor’s gotta low kinetic coefficient of friction.” Murasakibara said eventually, and sighing, like he knew that the fun and games were over, he levered himself up off the ground.

\- - -

They made their way back to the locker room in three distinct packs, the regulars walking together, the Trio huddling around Himuro, and Murasakibara plodding behind all of them after pulling out a family-sized snack bag - some kind of puffed rice thing that was shaped like round, multi-colored birds. Every few steps he’d pull one out and finish it off in a few messy bites, eating the heads first.

But if Tatsuya had to guess he looked... peaceful. A little bit more _here_. Maybe even a little pleased with himself.

Tatsuya was feeling pretty damned pleased with himself, but also desperately in need of a shower.

The thing that had really turned Tatsuya off the ‘jock’ thing for years were all those terrible sports movies that had open-floor prison-style showers - guys slapping each others’ asses with towels while saying homophobic shit. _Super_ not his scene. Thankfully the Seirin Locker room had nice modern cubicles, with curtains and everything, totally normal. 

Everyone staggered to their lockers, and as he was pulling out his Dad’s old bathroom towel (look, he was trying to save money and it was a classy dark gray) Tatsuya looked over just in time to see Murasakibara reach into his ragged middle-school sports bag and take out an XXL-sized bottle of Strawberry-flavored Baby Shampoo. It had a bright pink “Tear Free!” sticker on the front.

Tatsuya blinked. 

Baby shampoo. Tear-free. _Strawberry_.

At his old American schools he’d seen guys get beat up for using the wrong kind of AXE. The sheer amount of dumb, insecure assholes he’d had to put down because he wore eyeliner AND played sports didn’t bear talking about.

Without a trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness, at his same slow pace, Murasakibara flipped a faded yellow towel over his head (it may have started life as a terry cloth blanket, one of the Trio would have drowned in it) and wandered off toward the farthest shower stall in the corner.

_You really don’t give a single fuck what other people think huh?_

Back stateside Tatsuya had met tons people who pretended not to care what people thought. It was practically LA’s Official City Sport, right along with ‘trying to get famous.’ If he were honest(and he sometimes was) Tatsuya would put himself in the ‘pretty successful at pretending not to give a fuck’ category. But _‘pretending’_ was the key word there. 

And _he_ would definitely not walk into a locker room as the new guy with a bottle of baby shampoo. 

So. Upon further observation, Murasakibara’s goddamn weirdness was ever-present and effortless. You had to like, _admire_ it almost. 

Oh it was social suicide. _For sure._ But maybe Murasakibara was just two steps ahead of the game. Maybe he’d figured out that he wasn’t going to fit in no matter what, so he might as well have things his way. And who was gonna get into it with a huge kid who looked like he lived in the weight room about not being ‘manly’ enough?

Speaking of, if anyone said something, Tatsuya was gonna have to smack them down. Just like, out of principle.

But no one did. He saw a couple double-takes, a few raised eyebrows, but for now, more than anything, it seemed like Murasakibara’s quirks were humanizing him to the rest of the team. It was hard to be perma-scared of someone with rainbow chip dust all over his hands and a fluffy yellow towel.

Or someone who owned a huge, pastel-green hair dryer with industrial grip tape wrapped around the handle. 

The hair dryer made a harsh purring noise and gave off a dry, desert heat that made Tatsuya nostalgic. He almost wanted to borrow it but then it would probably blow his carefully combed-over bangs upward and people would see his other eye and his whole mystique would be gone. Better not risk it.

"You know, hairdryers are actually kind of bad for your hair if you overuse them." Tatsuya said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. This wasn’t beauty tips anonymous, and since when did _he_ care. But that’s what he got for being tired - all his filters started to slip.

"I don’t care. It's cold outside." Murasakibara said, his eyes closed, pushing his face into the stream of hot air. 

_Well, I tried. Enjoy the split ends._

His hair really was fine-textured, almost delicate. With the dryer blowing it back you could see the strong bone structure in his face. 

_He’s not cute._ Tatsuya thought with professional detachment. _Which is kind of a shame because then he’d be a lot more approachable. But he’s… striking, I guess. If I had to classify it._

Tatsuya’s dad, who was actually a pretty decent sculptor in between his bouts of gold-digging, would have had a field day with Murasakibara.

Tatsuya looked at him for another two seconds and then, with deliberate casualness went back to tying his shoes. By now he probably had a black belt at not looking at other guys for too long.

Anyway that should have been that: go home, do laundry, make enough stir fry for dinner that he’d have leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Just little survival things. Tatsuya was just about to holster his bag, say ‘bye’ to everybody and bounce.

Except Furihata was determined to keep surprising him. Breaking away away from the Trio cluster he walked up to the two of them, and then, making a cute sort of ‘here I go’ expression, reached way up and tapped Murasakibara on the shoulder.

“How long have you been playing basketball?” he asked.

Murasakibara peered down at him. After verifying that Furihata was still there and didn’t seem to be going away he shot Tatsuya a look over his head that was transparently ‘Why is this happening? Why is someone who isn’t you talking to me again?’ 

Tatsuya gave him a shrug and a smile like: ‘Go on. A little more off-the-court non-terror-based human interaction won’t kill you.’

“Since I was eight.” Murasakibara mumbled warily, not looking Furihata in the eyes.

“Oh! That explains why you’re so good at it! Um…Umm..” Clearly Furihata was surprised to get a reply and desperately trying to think of something else to ask to keep the conversation going “So… where did you to go middle school?”

Tatsuya could already see that it was absolutely the wrong question. 

Murasakibara’s eyes narrowed. With a single step forward his posture went from ‘just standing there’ to ‘you better fucking run.’ Furihata looked like he was regretting all of his recent choices, possibly as far back as the day he’d decided to apply to Seirin, or even the day he’d been born.

“Are you _making fun of me_?” Murasakibara asked, his slow nasal voice suddenly full of menace “‘Where did you go to middle school?’ Where do you _live_? Is it under a _rock_ or something? Teiko only won the nationals like _three whole times_. People wrote newspaper articles about us and everything.”

“N-nationals?” Furihata stuttered, edging away. The rest of the locker room had gone quiet. Any pre-existing casual conversations had died a quick and painful death.

“Yeah.”

“Holy crap! T-that sounds amazing! And you won too…” 

“Don’t see what’s amazing about it.” Murasakibara said flatly. “We were better than everyone, that’s all. Not like it helped us in the end.”

“Really? I don’t understand...”

“ _Forget it._ ” He swept the room with a fierce look. “Don’t even ask me about it. Nobody ever wants to listen to the winners complain.”

It seemed like he wanted to say something else. Like that question had brought up some feeling that was so big he didn’t know what to do with it. 

With a parting glare Murasakibara threw his fraying sports bag over his shoulder, wrenched open the locker room door and, ducking to keep from hitting his head, swept out. Like an angry localized weather system leaving the map.

The door banged shut, its hinges squealing. There was a weird charge left over in the air. It was so quiet you could hear people breathing.

Tatsuya sighed. 

_God fucking damn it._

He could feel that whole nice almost-team-like vibe they’d had before rolling backwards into ‘yikes, who let the monster in here with all the normal people.’

The regulars were on-edge. Furihata had sort-of shrank back against the well like he was trying to blend into the row of empty lockers. It wasn’t even really his fault, nobody could have known one little question would set Murasakibara off like that. 

_Yeah, no._ That was a shitty note to end the day on and he wasn’t gonna let it happen. 

Tatsuya stood up. 

“ _Okaaay then._ Clearly I’m missing something. What’s the deal with Teikou again? Somebody want to fill me in?”

“Man Himuro, you really _are_ from out of town.” Izuki said motioning him closer, the last two legs of the Trio somehow drifting into orbit around the two of them “Their team, well, their _old team -_ they’re kind of famous. Basically for curb-stomping everyone else in the league-” Izuki put his hand up to his mouth like he was telling a big secret “-aaand for kinda being dicks about it.” 

“Teiko Middle School’s starting lineup even had a special name.“ Hyuuga stepped in, pushing his glasses up dramatically with his index finger. “Everyone called them ‘The Generation of Miracles.’”

Tatsuya froze. He could feel the blood rushing in his ears. 

_Oh._

_OH._

_Don’t I feel stupid now._

~


	9. OMAKE: A Consultation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a tiny scene that wouldn't get out of my head. I'm going to have more of these smaller 'other character POV' chapters scattered throughout the story.

_Thump_.

“Dad! Da-aad!” 

Ah, were those the dulcet sounds of his adorable only daughter throwing her school-bag violently into the entryway and stomping her way up the stairs?

His suspicions were confirmed when Riko burst through the door, earphones around her neck, player stats notebook tucked under her arm.

“There you are! Dad, I need a consult. I hate to admit it, but I’m a little out of my depth with this one: I have a 16-year-old who’s 99kg, 208cm and still growing, and he seems to live mostly off chips, gluten puffed snacks, and processed sugar. ”

Aida Kagetora put down his guilty-pleasure end-of-a-long-day beer and hit the pause button on his daytime soap.

“Honey, you have a _what?!_ ”

~


	10. Round Two out of Infinity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got waaaaaay too long so in the interest of posting something and being like 'NEITHER I NOR THIS FIC ARE DEAD, KTHX' here you go. I actually have vast chunks of the story written but I had a work deadline and edits are fighting me hardcore right now.
> 
> Oh, one more thing. For those who never played basketball in middle school in America, some relevant info: HORSE is a game for 2 or more players where one person takes a shot from anywhere on the court, if they make it, the other person must do the exact same shot in the exact same way or they get a letter. The letters you get as penalty are H, O, R, S, E in that order (yes, this is to maximize small children going 'lol you are a HO right now') . The first person to get all five letters (aka. to miss the shots their opponents set up) loses.

On the outside Tatsuya did nothing. 

I mean, he finished folding his towel and raised his eyebrow just a tick and went “Oh yeah ‘The Generation of Miracles’, I guess I’ve heard of those guys.” 

Just waaay underplaying it. Because it was funny. There everyone went, acting like he’d missed his cue to gasp dramatically and clutch at his face like the fucking Home Alone kid: ‘Oh no!’ ‘The Generation of Miracles!’ ‘What _ever_ shall we do?!’ 

_As fucking if._

But mostly because the news _had_ knocked him off balance and damned if he’d give it the satisfaction.

“It kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? Their rep. If they had _him_ on defense as a starter.” he said to Izuki, shrugging a little for effect. “And I heard they all split up into different schools. I wonder if they’re really going to be all that without their safety net.” 

“Check him out, our new guy’s got _ice-water_ in his veins.” Izuki chortled. “But seriously dude, if you hold my soda will it get cold again?” 

Hyuuga snorted. “That’s just because he’s never played against any of them.” 

Tatsuya shouldered his bag and flashed him what he called his ‘two minute warning’ look as he walked by.

“I guess we’ll see when the time comes.” he said mildly. “Excuse me, _Captain_.”

And then he got out of there.

Look, the right thing to do would have been to stay and socialize. Sure, Hyuuga low-key hated him, goddess fucking knew _why,_ maybe just a leftover vibe from losing the practice game. But Tatsuya knew how to work people, how to smooth them over. 

And the rest of the second years seemed pretty cool so far. They were comfortable. Well, with each other anyway. This was probably one of those cliques of kids who had known one other since Elementary School and lived in the same ten blocks. Pure fantasy to someone who’d been dragged around to three cities and two hemispheres before he was ten. But just because they acted friendly didn’t mean they necessarily wanted to be friends. Just because it was a casual clique didn’t mean that he wasn’t automatically excluded. 

Whatever, baby steps. Tatsuya knew how to work his way into groups too. It was an essential survival skill and on a good day he could make it look effortless. You could belong anywhere as long as you knew that you belonged nowhere first.

But today he felt kind of tired. 

\---

 _How the hell did I miss it though?_ Tatsuya thought on the bus ride back to his building, tapping the beat from his headphones idly against the glass with his finger.

The Generation of Miracles were from Tokyo. It would only make sense that some of them had stayed in the area for high school. He had a moment of feeling like an idiot over the fact that he’d refused to google them. But also a flash of stubborn pride.

_That means Murasakibara knows the guy that Yosen scouted. The one that they probably got to replace me._

I mean, whatever. It’s not like Tatsuya had keep poking at that wound, even if it was tempting. That was all in the past. Thank God he’d met Murasakibara first and not the Miracles’ SG, though. He’d have been really tempted to push that guy down a set of stairs or something.

It really was a good thing he’d met Murasakibara first. For one thing, like, that was _it_ , that was the limit. ‘Prodigy’ or whatever they absolutely could not be physically scarier than that kid. If he ran into any of the others (and he had this niggling ‘FML’ sense that it was coming) Tatsuya was fully prepared to be underwhelmed. 

_I mean, what else do you call a 208cm tall asian kid with a 1/1000000 color mutation? ‘Miracle’ is a lot more PC than ‘monster.’_

The other good thing about Murasakibara was that they had so little overlap as players. It was easier for them to coexist. Tatsuya would never play Center, no offense. Fighting for rebounds was not his top ten idea of a good time and, the storied career of Andrew Wiggins aside, someone Murasakibara’s size would almost be wasted as an SG. 

Still, it was weird how Murasakibara hadn’t mentioned the ‘Miracle’ thing at all. Like ‘buy me dessert. Also, did I mention I’m lowkey famous?’ 

Of course the simplest explanation was that he didn't care.

But no, the way he'd reacted back there... Clearly it was a hot button issue. Maybe he was just _over it_ , like, he wanted a fresh start without the corny-ass nickname hanging over his head. Without whatever baggage that obviously came with it. 

Tatsuya could relate. There were definitely some things he’d done in middle school, some things about the person he’d been as little as a year ago, that he’d rather put way in the rearview mirror. 

\---

So somehow on the way home he ended up in front of the little cafe with the yellow tables where Murasakibara had dragged him for his bribe last night. Ok, to be a little more honest, Tatsuya noticed it as he was subtly glancing around, checking for landmarks. Look, when he was scoping out a new territory his sense of direction sometimes wasn’t… the greatest. Not being able to read all the kanji in the street signs didn’t help. 

_You know, I never did get to try any of that parfait..._

With typical poor impulse control, Tatsuya reached for the door and wandered in.

There was a different pretty girl at the counter this time - chubby, with orange eyeshadow, double hairbuns, and like 20 decora clips in her hair. When he got up there he realized that this was actually kind of weird - a guy, alone, in a cutesy place, ordering parfait. But it was too late to back out. 

_Fuck it. Social norms are stupid and stifling anyway._

“Are you waiting for somebody?” she asked, looking him up and down after she’d rung him up.

“Kind of.” He smiled, lying through his teeth. 

“Oh, an afterschool date! Must be nice to be young...” she said, sighing. “Hey, if it doesn’t work out, I’m free on Friday.”

Clearly she was the type of girl who flirted on automatic more than anything serious. Still, flattering. Besides, takes one to know one, right?

Tatsuya strategically leaned on the counter and put his hand under his chin. “I’ll keep that in mind~”

He got what he wanted out of her: a smile, and sauntered his way back to a table.

The parfait, when it arrived, seemed way larger than it did before. Probably because it didn’t have Murasakibara haunched protectively around it for contrast. 

_I think I’ve made a horrible mistake._ Tatsuya thought grimly, unwrapping his spoon. 

Sure curiosity would be satisfied, but at what cost? He’d have to do like 50 pushups and a 3 mile run tomorrow morning to balance out this bullshit. _Whatever, bring it._

Tatsuya closed his eyes, loaded up the spoon and took a bite. Yeah, the dark sauce had a vinegary bitterness that was satisfying to his weirdly inverted taste buds. When he was a kid at another new school, at recess, someone had dared him to eat a whole jar of pickles. He’d done it and drank the juice afterwards, to a chorus of admiring gasps. It hadn’t actually been hard. 

He’d still eat pickles sometimes, raw, without anything. But never in public. Sadly, there was no known cool way to eat a pickle, and the dick jokes were endless.

Anyway as he went on the parfait wasn’t so bad. The matcha whipped cream was not that sugary and corn flakes were some kind of lemony flavor all their own. Yuzu maybe? They had a nice texture when they crunched against his back teeth. But when he got down to the ice cream he ran into trouble. He ate about three spoons worth and then felt his insides begin to stage a rebellion. 

Nope. _Nope_. _Fuck this._ _Too fucking sweet. I can’t handle it._

It was like that time he’d gotten a full pillowcase of candy for Halloween and ended up giving it all to his little brother. Taiga had collapsed in the middle of Alex’s living room, chocolate all on his face and still around his mouth. Tatsuya had taken a grainy blackmail photo on his flip-top camera phone. 

For some reason thinking about it made his stomach clench up more. 

_And now I’m out 400 yen. I could have bought coffee with this… or dish soap. Or something useful._

Sighing he clinked the spoon into the glass. And then the little hairs lifted up on the back of his neck, old instincts kicking into high alert. 

Something dangerous was nearby. He could just feel it. And like an idiot he’d sat in full view of the main window, with his back to the door. What the hell though? He was too new in town to have people to watch out for already. 

Subtly, pretending to stretch his neck, Tatsuya turned around.

Murasakibara was standing on the other side of the glass. Staring at him.

Tatsuya very, very deliberately did not fall out of his chair. But honestly, if anything, he was relieved. 

_At least I_ know _this particular dangerous thing._

Slowly, he raised his hand and waved ‘Hi.’ 

Equally slowly, like he was participating in an alien greeting ritual, Murasakibara waved ‘Hi’ back. He looked, if anything, a little disappointed to have had such a normal effect on someone.

_Did you think you’d scare me? Sorry buddy, the human brain is designed to get used to anything and you get less terrifying every time I see you._

At least, a solution to his ice cream problem presented itself. Tatsuya made a ‘here here’ sort of gesture and kicked out the other chair at his table in invitation.

The door bell jangled. There was a quickly stifled horrified gasp from the counter girl. Yeah, she must have been a recent hire. 

Murasakibara folded himself carefully into the offered chair, the metal groaning a little. He stacked his massive arms on the edge of the table and put his head down on them like a kindergartner preparing for a nap.

“Hey.” Tatsuya said.

“...”

“You wanna order something?”

“...’m broke.” he muttered sleepily.

“4th of the month and you’re broke already?”

“’S not _my_ fault all the big brands release their new snack flavors right when school starts.”

“Is that your hobby? Trying new snacks?” It was an easy leap. When it had made an appearance at practice, Murasakibara’s grubby old middle school sports bag had been freshly stuffed with brightly colored packets. 

“Uh huh.” He was looking out the window, but now and then his eyes would swivel to the parfait with adorably transparent longing. 

Some mean part of Tatsuya, a few levels below his already terrible personality, wanted to take a spoonful of the ice cream and slowly, teasingly eat it in front of his face. Just to see what would happen. But he was better than that. If only by a small margin. And the ice cream was _vanilla_ \- literally the worst, most boring flavor in the world.

“Well, you’re lucky I _am_ the sharing kind.” Tatsuya slid the glass over to him. “Here.” 

It was only after he’d done it that he had this moment of ‘Wait, should I have not? Did I do something culturally insensitive again?’ Look, he was probably doing better than 90% of all the other returnees. But sometimes things snuck up on him. And there was all this subtle stuff that you weren’t supposed to do with food. 

Times like that Tatsuya managed to laugh it off gracefully. Saying things like ‘haha, you forgot I was in America, right? I get a little bit of leeway I hope~’ but on the inside he was always seething and embarrassed. 

Luckily, Murasakibara absolutely did not care. He took Tatsuya’s used spoon without a blink, licked it clean, and began systematically destroying the rest of the ice cream. 

“Waaaait, why are you doing this? There better not be a catch.” he said, literally three seconds later, when the glass was empty. 

Tatsuya fought down a grin. _You really should have asked that earlier._

“No. It’s a lot. And honestly, I don’t really like sweet things.” 

“You really don’t? That’s super wierd.”

 _You are literally the last guy on earth who can call other people weird._ What made it even funnier was how Murasakibara was chewing on the spoon as he said it.

With the brutal death of the parfait they were left face-to-collarbone across the table, just kind of staring at each other. Over the slope of Murasakibara’s massive shoulder Tatsuya could see the counter girl giving them a grade-A ‘What the Fuck is Happening Here’ kind of look. 

The thing was, once you got over his god-given scariness, Murasakibara was strangely soothing to be around. He just seemed to be very low-maintenance as a person. The last guy Tatsuya had known in Cali who was sort-of like that went around at 4:20 levels of high most of the time, but Murasakibara seemed to come by his off-court chill honestly. 

Tatsuya was sure that if he stayed still and didn't say anything Murasakibara wouldn't get pissed off or try and fill in the space with conversation. He would probably just sit there, blinking back at him placidly and maybe lay his head back down to take a nap.

Just as he’d finished thinking that, Murasakibara leaned over and poked Tatsuya none-too-gently in the shoulder with one of his ginormous bear claw hands.

“Let's go.” 

“And where are we going, exactly?” he asked, raising his visible eyebrow.

“The court.” This statement had a strong, unspoken _‘duh’_.

“You know _,_ I still don’t have a ball...” said the side of Tatsuya that thought he should go home and sleep, attempting logic. But it was a little half-hearted. There’d be nothing back at the apartment but homework and empty space, and if he kept hanging out with this guy something interesting was bound to happen.

Murasakibara gave him the same sort of flat, evaluating look he’d given him last night. 

_Christ,_ Tatsuya thought, fighting not to squirm in his chair _why are your pupils so tiny?_

“You shared, so I guess I’ll share.” he said, in the end.

\---

So that’s how Tatsuya wound up on the broken court for the second time.

The vibe was totally different now. It was daytime, he wasn’t worried about immediate grievous bodily harm, and with the sun doing it’s golden hour magic - rays of light catching the stray flowering weeds, the genre of the place shifted from horror to maybe one of those thoughtful post-apocalyptic indie movies.

The court’s nightmare inhabitant was also a lot less intimidating without long shadows to lurk in. Especially since Tatsuya noticed that his hair was still kind of fluffed up in the back, from the hair dryer. 

Still, it was clearly time to establish a couple more boundaries.

“Look, I don’t mind doing this. But let’s play HORSE first as a warmup.“

“Ehhhh? Why? I don’t wanna.” 

_Pouting_. Murasakibara was literally pouting at him. That should not have worked with his face/build/everything. But it was weirdly effective. You could see traces of the kind of little(?) kid he must have been, getting stuff out of people by acting cute.

“ _Because_.” Tatsuya felt compelled to explain “You know that bit in elementary school when you say you want to play on the swings and your friend says they want to build a sandcastle and so first you play on the swings and then you build a sandcastle? Compromise. That’s how people work.”

He stuck his hands semi-dramatically into the pockets of his uniform jacket. 

"So we'll play HORSE now and one-on-one later. Or I’m going home." 

"Isn’t it just ‘cause you want something _you_ can win at?" Murasakibara drawled, licking crumbs from some round tube-like snack that he’d demolished on the way over out of the creases of his palm.

"I want to know what _you_ can do.” Tatsuya said, conveniently ignoring his worthy opponent’s very legit point. “So that I know when to pass the ball back to you."

The look Murasakibara gave him was the epitome of ‘that sounds fake, but OK.’ 

Luckily, just as Tatsuya suspected, he was too lazy to argue about it.

\---

So the good news was that Tatsuya actually won at HORSE. 

But definitely not by the comfortable margin that he thought he would. 

Murasakibara’s shots were bare-bones, and weirdly ‘heavy’ feeling. Even at gunpoint you couldn't call them graceful. But they still went in. 

_A beast on defense AND a high shot percentage. Jesus, why are all your stats literally sky-high?_

He could even do threes in a pinch, though his form was less of a form and more just throwing the ball real hard at the right place on the backboard. At some point in the past he’d really put the time in on _everything_ but Tatsuya had a feeling that lately he’d started to over-rely on dunks.

He'd done a dunk when they were both tied at 3 letters each: two ground-eating steps and a jump that didn’t seem like a jump but more like reaching up for something that he knew he was going to get. A triumphant chime from the chains of the net. Then a stress-ping noise from the twice-reinforced hoop as he hung his weight from it before lazily letting go. 

The wind had come back then. Like it had just showed up to fan his hair out dramatically into a banner, to carry down him to the ground.

 _Unreal_. Tatsuya thought. Some still-full-of-kid-like-wonder part of his brain throwing its’ hands up yelling: _‘That’s awesome! It’s so crazy that this person exists!’_

And then reality re-asserted itself.

_I wish I could..._

"You know I _literally can't do that_ , right?" Tatsuya said icily as soon as Murasakibara got back from loping to the fence to pick up the ball.

"...maybe I could lift you?" he was looking back and forth between Tatsuya and the hoop. "Since you dragged me around today. Bet you’re not heavy at all." 

" _ **No**_.” 

_I would rather fucking die, thanks._

For a bad split second Tatsuya wondered how he'd actually fight the other boy, if he ever had to do it seriously. Uppercut under the chin? The knees? Definitely the knees first. And then he’d probably _get ripped limb from limb,_ so no.

And Murasakibara had said it so innocently, rubbing the corner of his eye. Like even after everything that had happened today he was just now waking up. 

Seeing that, it was hard to hold on to any kind of anger, to hold it against him. If Tatsuya went off and punched him now he probably wouldn't even understand why Tatsuya was mad in the first place.

"We could… not count that one. Or whatever." Murasakibara mumbled, looking down at his feet after the silence got too long.

Tatsuya knew an obvious peace offering when he heard it. 

“Yeah, OK.” he said, as softly as he could manage, uncurling his hand from a fist.

\---

The rest of the game went quick and quiet. Tatsuya trying to wrestle himself back into a semblance of friendly humanity. Murasakibara staring thoughtfully at the basket before attempting whatever shot they were on, making frustrated little bitten-off sounds whenever he missed. 

That, more than anything, helped. Miracle or not, monster stats or not, he wasn’t perfect. That made everything easier.

“ _Fine_ , we did your dumb HORSE thing. Let’s actually play.” he said imperiously, right after his ball bounced off the rim, cementing Tatsuya’s technical victory. “And you're not allowed to give up." 

"No chance of that." Tatsuya said, unzipping his jacket and rolling his shoulders. No matter how evening-chilly it was now, he’d be sweating soon. 

Oh, this was gonna suck. But he’d promised. His little speech about compromise would be max hypocritical if he backed out now. And even if _certain hella immature oversized persons_ wouldn’t take time to acknowledge it, in his mind the scoreboard now read: 

“Himuro: 1, Murasakibara: 1” 

Tatsuya could live with that.

\---

They played.

It was the same and not the same. 

His shots were blocked, his advance routes were blocked. 

At least his fakes worked now, and that part was hella satisfying - briefly breaking away, Murasakibara stumbling left while he went right. Or throwing his hands up to block a shot that Tatsuya had convinced him was coming while Tatsuya ducked under his arms and dashed forward. 

But with only the two of them, without someone else to complete the play it was all just for show. There were never more than a handful of seconds before Murasakibara’s freakishly long strides caught up and he became 90% of Tatsuya’s view again, blocking out victory and light, pretty much in that order.

 _I can’t beat him. There is absolutely no way in hell I’m winning this._ Tatsuya thought, but the thought wasn’t as bitter as it should have been, considering that it was one of his thoughts. 

_I guess nobody really expects me to. In a fucked-up way, that’s a relief. Nobody is going to judge me for failing to beat this ridiculous, statistically improbable guy. Hell, they’d probably applaud me for trying..._

Eventually, as they kept playing, as sweat began to stick his T-shirt to the skin of his back, his frustration rolled over into this strange kind of zen. Like slowly sinking into cold water. Like walking into a cloud. 

_It’s enough. I might not beat him today, or ever, but every breath I take right now - it’s enough. Every second I keep standing is enough._

After all, Murasakibara literally just wanted someone to play with. 

_And when you get down to it, so do I._

\---

Though speaking of things Murasakibara wanted...

“Aren’t you gonna do that fancy shot?” he demanded when they were taking a sort of unofficial break. Tatsuya to get air back in his lungs and Murasakibara to swipe his hair out of his eyes for what must have been the tenth time. Randomly Tatsuya had this crazy vision of charming the cafe girl out of her cutesy decora clips just so he could stick them all on Murasakibara. That’d be a picture. 

“I’m saving it for games so I’d rather not.”

Murasakibara made a disappointed “tch” noise. 

Smirking, Tatsuya waited until he had started to turn away, then rolled the ball up along his arm and into position, did his magic, released.

With downright scary speed Murasakibara lunged for it, but only grabbed air.

“Ugh, you’re the wooooorrrrrst. Do it again!”

Oh man, his face. His totally indignant face - eyebrows almost touching crankily, mouth curled into a C. It was too much. Too hard to resist. Tatsuya found himself laughing, and doing the Mirage Shot again. He was too tired to do it right, so the ball rolled along the rim but watching Murasakibara flail and paw at empty sky was too good to pass up.

He still had that ridiculous frown on as he chased the ball down to where it had bounced into a cluster of dandelions. Bits of his hair were standing up with sweat and indignation. He made an over-the-top growling sound and lobbed the ball at Tatsuya like it was some kind of DBZ chi attack. But it didn’t seem like he was actually all that mad. And by now Tatsuya knew how much force to expect. He stepped back to compensate, rolling the ball cooly between his hands and then under one arm.

Stepping forward he dribbled through his legs. 

_Right. Here we go again._

\---

Look, Tatsuya didn’t give up - not once, but he did stumble eventually.

“Guess you’re done, huh?” Murasakibara was looming over him looking at him with what seemed like his usual flat look. But maybe there was a tiny bit of concern in it. Like a kid who got a new toy but wasn’t sure how it worked yet, so he was worried about breaking it.

“Just for tonight.” Tatsuya said, trying not to pant.

“Well don’t _die_ or anything.” 

Plodding over to his sports-bag Murasakibara pulled out something cylindrical, and without any preamble, threw it at Tatsuya’s head.

Tatsuya caught it reflexively. It was a mini-bottle filled with some kind of electrolyte water/soft-drink/something. The brightly-colored label was swimming in his vision, not parsing at all. 

“What’s with that face? I didn’t throw it _that_ hard.” 

He had, actually, thrown it pretty hard. But Tatsuya suspected that his metrics, like pretty much his everything, were a couple steps off normal. 

“Nothing.” he said diplomatically. “That was surprisingly nice of you.”

“Hey, I can be _nice._ ” Murasakibara frowned. Some internal straightforwardness made him add “...if I feel like it.”

Tatsuya killed the bottle in seconds and, admittedly, felt less like he was gonna throw up. He picked his jacket up from where he’d thrown it and surreptitiously tried to dust it off(dramatic tossing was well and good but he’d better go easy on it from now on, for the sake of the laundry fees.) His head was blank and clean. 

By the time he had gotten his sports bag and other stuff together Murasakibara was already leaning on the fence by the door to the court, grazing on a brand new bag of shrimp chips.

Like he was waiting for him.

Tatsuya followed him out. It was dark now, but he still had nothing better to do.

They walked about three blocks side by side, not saying anything. Almost like they were daring each other to be the one to talk first.

"What was up with that lame club meeting anyway?” Murasakibara broke the silence suddenly as they turned a corner. “You call that practice? It’s not enough. They didn’t make us run 100 laps as a warm up or anything." 

Tatsuya, who had honestly zoned out a little, almost bumped into his side. 

"It was just the first practice. I think Coach is trying to ease the new members into it, you know? So that they don't run screaming into the night." 

Murasakibara seemed to mull it over with another handful of shrimp chips. The family-size bag was now three quarters to empty. 

"'S not enough for _me_ though." He gave Tatsuya a sort of up-and-down look. “Probably not for you either.”

"Okay, so on days when the training menu’s not enough we can keep doing this. If you want." 

_Whoa, WHOA, wait. Why am I even saying this? Yesterday I was like ‘hell no, not for love or money.’_

Well, the cold hard truth was: he was lonely. 

And like he’d said, losing to Murasakibara in one-on-one wasn’t as painful as losing to other people. It was like losing to a hurricane, or an act of God. You just sort of threw your hands up and then you tired to get on with your life. 

In the face of his very generous and sorta masochistically self-sacrificial offer Murasakibara shrugged. 

But it was the kind of shrug that meant ‘yeah OK’ more than ‘whatever.’

~


	11. Himuro Tatsuya's Guide To Picking Your Battles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having a lot of fun riffing off canon lemme tell you...
> 
> Shoutout to graybles and five_lanterns and Wanderer_j and Cold_Gold_Heart and Kara and AnimeWarrioress359 and   
> Pink Paradox and everyone who leaves comments on every chapter, I'm super grateful! I know it's hard to follow a long WIP but knowing y'all are out there keeps me going~

They walked another three blocks. This time Tatsuya was the one who cracked and broke the silence.

“Still, I get it now. The whole ‘Miracles’ thing... Your old team won so many games and got famous because they had _you,_ didn’t they?”

Murasakibara shook his shaggy head vehemently. “Nope.”

Tatsuya stopped in his tracks. 

“Really? Aren’t you, like, selling yourself short?”

Look, Tatsuya had only known him two days but Murasakibara being self-deprecating was definitely out of character.

“Maybe back in first year. They really needed me then. Kuro-chin hadn’t shown up yet and Kise-chin was still playing soccer…” he seemed to catch himself, squinting suspiciously. “What do you care? It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Just curious.” Tatsuya said easily. And he was, he was so fucking afire with curiosity that smoke could be curling out of his nostrils. There was some captial-D Drama around the Miracles, around their Dream Team’s apparent breakup, he could smell it. But he should have known better than to push for it this early.

Murasakibara snorted and inhaled another handful of chips.

Clearly it was time for a different tack.

“So, you’ve been playing since you were eight huh? It’s been about that long for me. I only found out about basketball after after my dad moved us to America.”

“...America? Oh yeah, you said.” Mention of America didn’t seem to impress him any more the second time. He looked down at Tatsuya consideringly. “Is that why you gotta accent?” 

To his utter fucking mortification Tatsuya felt himself start to blush. 

“I do not.” he said quickly. He couldn’t have. It had been a year and the first couple months in Akita he’d practiced his pronunciation from youtube videos every night so that he didn’t slip up in class.

“Do too.” 

“I don’t.”

“Whaa-at~ It’s only a little bit. Don’t get all worked up about it.” 

Tatsuya fumed in silence, refusing to give any more energy to this playground bullshit, until a huge finger poked him insistently in the cheek.

“Your face is all red.”

Tatsuya glared up at him, his medium-strength ‘don’t fucking test me’ glare. Murasakibara blinked back at him like ‘that’s cute, I see scarier faces in the mirror every morning.’

“I guess it’s all America’s fault. When you think about it.” Murasakibara said thoughtfully, once they passed another intersection.

“What is?”

"Basketball.” 

And then he said something completely unexpected. 

“I hate basketball. It's a stupid game. It's unfair."

"Nothing's fair though.” Tatsuya shot back. He was too tired to be bitter so he just sounded certain “ _Literally nothing._ "

He couldn’t even get mad - it was too goddamn absurd. 

_Sure. You hate basketball. Because after club practice you dragged me, a near-total stranger, over here to play. For another hour. On top of yesterday._

_And now that I’m thinking about it, I’m 99.9% sure that you’re the one who drew the lines back in with chalk after they faded out on that court. The same court that you used so much that you broke the hoop and they had to reinforce the basket. But suuuure, you totally hate basketball._

_That’s the biggest fucking lie I’ve ever heard in my whole life._

"If you hate it so much, why are you still playing then?" he asked. Full disclosure: mostly to needle Murasakibara about his blatant proportionally-huge emotional blind spot. 

"I'm good at it. And if you're not good at something society starts harping on about what you're bad at. And I'm bad at lots of things. So..." Murasakibara shrugged. “Besides. If I quit, all those other guys: Nebuya and Iron Heart and whoever, they’d throw a freaking _parade_.” 

Looking up at the streetlight Murasakibara curled his lip back, flashing a row of square white teeth. 

“Nobody’s that lucky.” 

It was probably the most animated Tatsuya had ever seen his face and, um, _yikes_. Total nightmare material.

_Shit. I got a little complacent tonight, didn’t I?_ Tatsuya thought. _Between the snacks and the teasing, I forgot. I forgot that that ‘holy shit, danger’ feeling I had back at the cafe still very much applies._

Still, even as he felt a sliver of that old unease return, Tatsuya felt like he understood the guy beside him a little bit better. 

_Yeah, if I was the ultimate threat, the player that everyone else was aiming for, I wouldn’t let go either. No matter how bad it got. No matter what._

"Besides, I can't quit yet.” Two steps, a change of lighting and a return back to his usual nasal drawl and suddenly Murasakibara seemed almost harmless again. “There's someone I've gotta finish things with."

“Oho, the plot thickens~” Tatsuya perked up. “An old friend of yours?”

A head shake for ‘no.’ For a second, Tatsuya could have sworn that he looked...blank? Sad?

"A rival?"

Another vehement head shake.

“It’s complicated?”

A nod. 

“Well, do you want help?” Tatsuya said impulsively. “With your guy? Taking him down and all that.”

To this day he has no idea why he said it. The thing was, Murasakibara had been friendly to him, probably in the best way that he knew how. Maybe in return Tatsuya wanted to offer him the one thing he’d always secretly wished for in his own fights: backup.

“Ehhhh?”

“Two against one is better odds.” Tatsuya explained patiently. Then he trailed off.

Murasakibara was staring at him with genuine shock.

“You have no idea what you’re getting into.” he said. No long vowels, no drawl, no nothing. It was the most serious Tatsuya had ever heard him sound about anything.

“So tell me.” 

That just seemed to frustrate him. 

“Akachin isn’t something that you can just _explain_ to people.” 

Murasakibara sighed and stopped dead in the middle of the street like the topic was too important for walking. With an air of downright _ceremony_ , he rolled up the now-empty shrimp chip bag and stuffed it into his pocket before speaking again.

“Look, like I said, you’re not bad. You could _maybe_ beat Kise-chin one time out of ten. If he was having an off day. Kise-chin’s the second-weakest out of all of us. Do you get that? Akachin was our Captain and bossed us around all the time. The distance is like-” he seemed to be at a loss for metaphors and gestured vaguely upwards “-like from you to the _sky_.”

“I kind of assumed you were the strongest. You know, for obvious reasons”

"He's... stronger than me. ...probably. Maybe.” Murasakibara said slowly, even slower than usual, like every word was getting dragged out of him by wild horses.

Tatsuya must have made a hell of a face.

“Well not like I’ve _checked_ lately or anything!” Murasakibara crossed his arms defensively. “Because I mostly like being alive. And not having my ankles broken. And last time-" He let the sentence trail off and die like he wanted nothing to do with it anymore. 

"A guy that’s stronger than you…” Tatsuya mused, “I admit I’m having a really hard time picturing that."

“Not like, _physically_ stronger, just all the other stuff.” Murasakibara frowned defiantly and leaned in, like he was about to tell him a national-level secret. “Akachin’s _short_." 

"Honestly that just makes it more difficult." Tatsuya deadpanned.

"Yeah well, wait ‘til we run into him at Nationals. _Then_ you'll believe me.” he muttered ominously. “If you even last long enough to look him in the eye...” 

"You think we can make Nationals? With this bunch?" Tatsuya changed the subject as quickly as he could. The idea of someone stronger than Murasakibara, but apparently, _condensed_ or some shit, was so brain-breaking that he was just going to have to come back to it. Also the part where he’d agreed to fight this person. 

Murasakibara made one of his considering back-of-the-throat humming noises. "We’d better. They're weak though." 

_But everyone’s ‘weak’ to you, aren’t they?_

"All the other schools are weak too.” Tatsuya pointed out. “Everyone’s assembling their new teams right now, feeling things out, probably not gelling together right away and feeling frustrated about it."

“They’re weak ‘n they’re scared of me.” he said mulishly, puffing his cheeks around the two chip-dust covered fingers that he’d shoved into his mouth. It was almost like he was hoping someone would try and argue the counterpoint. 

“Time will fix both of those things. Time and Coach’s doubtless hellish regular practice schedule.” 

_Look at you,_ Tatsuya thought wryly _making me of all people take the optimist side. I guess I just like playing Devil’s Advocate._

“And you know,” he went on “you _not_ blowing up at the other first-years when they ask you perfectly normal questions would really help.”

Ah yes, the return of the >:C face. “Don’t tell me what to do.” 

“Hey, the exposure strategy works - I’m living proof. I only met you yesterday and now I’m not scared of you at all.”

Did Murasakibara only make eye contact with people when he wanted to intimidate them? Because fuck, it was effective. The halo of the streetlight behind him threw harsh shadows, onto his already harsh face, highlighted the sleepless grooves under his eyes.

“ _Quit lying_.” he growled.

Tatsuya stood his ground. “Fine, I got a little ahead of myself. Guess you’ll have to give me another week. But you’ll see. Eventually I won’t be.”

“ _Eventually_.” Murasakibara parroted back “I’m gonna figure out your stupid trick shot and crush it.”

But he did lean back from staring holes into Tatsuya’s face, eyes safely fixed on some point just above his ear. 

“You’d make a good Shadow though.” he said slowly, like that statement made any sense at all. “You know, I always wanted one. And it's not fair that Kuro-chin and I got along the best outside of practice but Mine-chin got him in the end. And then Mine-chin went and lost him. Next time I see Mine-chin I'm gonna-" he yawned suddenly, like saying so many words at once had worn him out, "-break him into little pieces." 

“Anyway from now on you're my Shadow, got it? "

_One day._ Tatsuya thought fervently _I am going to actually understand everything that comes out of your mouth._

_What the hell is a Shadow? Is there some kind of basketball-specific local slang that I’m missing here? I’ve never even heard of this shit in Akita._

Either way, the choice was clear. 

“No way.” he said easily.

Murasakibara shot him a downright betrayed look. Like he’d just offered him candy and Tatsuya had smacked it out of his hand onto the ground. 

“Hey now, come on.” He looked so genuinely bummed out that Tatsuya weirdly felt like he had to comfort him. “You can’t expect me to just agree to things. And you have to admit, it sounds suspicious.”

"Uggggghhhh. _Fine_. You can be the Light if you want. You run around more anyway, and people are always looking at you. I don't eeeven caaare~" 

As this was happening, the intersection light they were coming up on at had turned green and then yellow. Murasakibara, like he couldn’t be arsed to pay attention to mere mortal things like civil infrastructure and moving cars, blithely stepped out into traffic.

Tatsuya nearly had a heart attack.

Completely by instinct, (he blamed that summer camp job, with the ten-year-olds), Tatsuya’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist. Which was totally pointless, given their mass difference, but it got Murasakibara to stop and look down at whatever feeble little thing was trying to drag him back to the sidewalk.

“Hey, watch it! You wanna get hit by a bus?!” 

“...it’d be bad news for the bus.” Murasakibara muttered. 

Tatsuya let go of his wrist. It was crazy, his own hand wasn’t small, but his fingers couldn’t reach all the way around it. 

“Bad news for whoever has to scrape all of you off the street.” he said, unimpressed. “Seriously, you need to go home and get more sleep, OK? Before you make a dent in the downtown express and hold up public transit.”

Murasakibara grunted something unintelligible and held his wrist up for inspection like he was checking it for cooties. But he waited for the light to try crossing again, this time even with a half-assed attempt to avoid traffic. When he was safely on the other side he turned back to Tatsuya and stuck his tongue out at him.

Tatsuya resisted a brief, intense urge to do the same. 

Seeing that Tatsuya wasn’t going to follow him across (he was kinda far from his building already and it was late) Murasakibara waved ‘bye’, with a slowness that on another type of guy might have read as hesitation.

_What the heck is this? Are we in elementary school? It’s uncool. It’s seriously uncool. Two badass ballers waving their hands around like little kids._

But in the end Tatsuya waved ‘bye’ back, feeling a weird sort of something that he was too tired to think about closely. He watched Murasakibara make his way up the street and around a corner and then, turning around, began to carefully retrace his way back to his block.

\---

_Dear Alex,_

_I’m assuming you haven’t written back because you forgot to check your email, not because Taiga’s your favorite now and you think I’m garbage_

Tatsuya typed that, looked at it for a heavy second, then deleted it and started again. 

_Dear Alex,_

_Quick question: do you think I’m capable of having a normal friendship with anyone?_

_Remember how I met Taiga, and then literally that week he declared that he wanted me to be his older brother? And then we got those cheap-ass rings that got too big for our fingers almost immediately. Looking back now, that symbolism is… kind of funny isn’t it?_

_I guess ‘funny’ isn’t really the right word._

_So literally the day after all the stuff from my last email I meet the same boy again. We got some ice cream(actual facts: he ate my ice cream since he’s actually into that kind of thing.), we played HORSE. Then a little one-on-one. I won one thing and lost the other but the thing is, I don’t even hate him. That’s weird for me, right?_

_Anyway then I offered to help him fight some guy. Not just any guy, apparently some really scary motherfucker. This will all be 100 times funnier once I actually send you a picture of the boy. Because talk about scary..._

_So the relevant backstory is: the boy used to be #2 of this crew called The Generation of Miracles. They’re basically like a street gang. A street gang, plus basketball. There’s rankings and everything. I’m not sure why I was even surprised. Anyway he’s got some kind of beef with his former Captain and now I’m caught up in it. Voluntarily even._

_So here I go, agreeing to something kind of extreme with somebody I just met again._

_I wonder what that says about me._

_Again, to re-iterate: all this stuff aside, I’m totally fine. Going to class, doing homework, going to club practice. Not even smoking anymore (everything is so pricy in Tokyo, don’t get me started). Anyway, I hope you’re doing OK too._

_PS: Google weather says it’ll be 89 and sunny over there all week so don’t forget sunscreen._

(he felt pretty lame writing that but she forgot, OK? Tatsuya used to be the one to remind her to put it in the beach bag whenever they went out on the weekends. Taiga with a sunburn as red as his hair was fucking funny, but then again: skin cancer.)

_PPS: Have you ever heard of a ‘Light and Shadow’? The way this guy talked about it heavily implied some Significant Capital Letters. I know back in the day you told me lots of things about the Game. But I know you didn’t tell me everything, and I hate to be left in the dark._

\---

 

The next morning, as he was trying to get his school shoes out of his locker Tatsuya found himself swallowed up by a familiar shadow. 

_I wonder… could I just use him a sunshade in the summertime? I think I’m gonna have to try that._

“Good morning.” he said, without looking. Even as the guy who had been putting his umbrella away one locker over visibly flinched and rabbited away like he’d seen the devil. 

Having Murasakibara around was surely going to raise the school’s average courage level. As soon as people got used to him anyway. 

“I changed my mind, I wanna be the Light.” Murasakibara said, instead of ‘Hi’ or literally any normal sentence.

“Why can’t you just have both people be the Light?” 

Tatsuya still hadn’t the faintest fucking clue what any of it meant( his second email to his mentor having also Disappeared into the Void Of Alexandra Garcia’s Legendary Lack Of Functional Adult Skills), but the idea of some kind of rigid, predetermined ‘Shadow’ and ‘Light’ roles for people sent his well-trained bullshit senses tingling. 

When he finally turned around Murasakibara had a fist under his chin and looked like he was thinking pretty hard on the issue. 

“Dunno.” he said, after a pause “Never heard of it like that. Maybe it’s against the rules?” 

“Well,” Tatsuya said, closing his locker decisively and giving the combination lock a spin. “sounds like a rule that was meant to be broken. See you at practice~”

\---

But practice was full of weird bullshit. Again.

“Oh you can’t play in games yet. You’re _provisional_ members.” Hyuuga said smugly, pushing up his glasses with a single finger. As if that had a chance in hell of making him and his stupid crewcut look cool. 

Oh Hyuuga. Tasty shoulders or not, Hyuuga was pissing him off a little. Tatsuya wasn’t normally a ‘punch the other guy while he still had his eyewear on’ sort of person but with the right sort of incentive he could _learn_. 

“Come again?” he asked, mild as milk. “You need to turn in a special membership form-”

“...this better not be hazing or whatever.” rumbled Murasakibara ominously from over his shoulder. He had a unique talent for sounding very bored and very ominous at the same time. Which was kind of cool. Tatsuya could only manage either one or the other.

“Oh no! This is for all new club members.” Hyuuga said quickly. “Anyway, go talk to the Coach, I’m late for class.” Looking a lot less smug and a lot more shaky on his feet he practically dove into a group of people heading up the stairs towards the second year’s wing.

_Wow. Way to pass the buck dude._

“You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think our ‘valiant Captain’ was scared of us.” Tatsuya mused crossing his arms, watching Hyuuga’s retreat. “What do you think?”

Beside him, Murasakibara blew a soft puff of air out of his nose. The side of his mouth curled up a little.

As far as Tatsuya could tell, this was the closest he got to laughing.

\---

Luckily, Coach was easily found. She was in her homeroom, playing some kind of bodybuilding game on her 3DS. At least it wasn’t a BL dating sim or whatever. Tatsuya wouldn’t have put it past her. 

She motioned them closer without taking her eyes off the screen. When they got near enough that Murasakibara was literally looming over her desk like a grim harbinger, and Tatsuya was strategically between her and the window she hit a bunch of buttons and tucked her stylus behind her ear to scrutinize the progress of some beefy footballer.

“That’s better. My eyes were getting tired from the glare” she said, still without looking up. Talk about a power move.

“So Captain Hyuuga was kind enough to inform us that there’s an extra step until we can play in games.” Tatsuya was 99% sure he managed not to sound sarcastic.

“Yep.” 

“Well, could I have one of these special forms? Please?” Tatsuya looked at Murasakibara, who seemed content to stand there and be Coach’s new gaming umbrella. “Make that two.”

“Here you go.” she said, fishing two pieces of paper out of her desk with her left hand, her right hand was still poking the digital footballer in the pec with her stylus.

_Oookayyy. Why did that seem too easy..._

“Right, thanks.” Tatsuya turned to go. 

“Not so fast! I’ll accept your applications…” Coach put the 3DS down with a loud ‘THWACK’ and posed dramatically. Little flames were dancing in her eyes. “...at 7:30am tomorrow! On the roof!”

Murasakibara sighed.

“I don’t wanna get up that early.”

\---

So it was, in the end, technically, hazing. 

Sort-of hazing. The mildest, cutest, gentlest hazing ritual Tatsuya had ever heard of. 

Even the consequences were straight out of summer camp. I mean, ‘Declare your goals for the year in front of the whole school at morning assembly and accomplish them... Or confess to the person you like, in the buff’?

How childish could you get. 

_Also: Checkmate, Coach. I don’t like anyone._

Tatsuya could see clear though this whole thing and and out the other side: a bonding exercise for new club members, a chance for Aida Riko to get insight into what her new players’ priorities were. So basically just another psych test. Well, Tatsuya was good at those. Even if he hated them.

“You know Coach, this is a nice bonding and focusing exercise for the _first-years_. Why am I here again?” he asked casually, trying to do his best ‘aren’t we both such mature second-years who are totally above this’ expression. 

Coach gave him a Look.

“Punishment for not being here last year.” she chirped. ‘And for being a smartass’ went unspoken.

“Um, I’d be more comfortable if Himuro-senpai went first.” mumbled Furihata.

“Me too.” chimed in Kawahara.

“Yeah, same.” 

_Et tu, bald kid? Bunch of traitors._

“...” said Murasakibara, making a vague gesture, or actually just reaching up to scratch behind his ear.

Coach gave Tatsuya the megaphone and gave him a gentle shove towards the edge of the roof. It seemed like an excuse to feel up his deltoids more than anything. God she was weird.

Was he supposed to just stand there and talk? 

_Nah, let’s punch it up a little._

Tatsuya vaulted over the safety fence and hopped up on the rim of the roof. The view was fantastic from way up here. Then he made the mistake of looking down at the neat rows of all the students lined up for morning assembly. Jesus, they looked tiny. 

If he slipped off now not only would he look uncool he would probably break a leg and/or die.Which was bad. Broken leg = no basketball.

_Fuck._

His tongue felt stuck to his teeth. Down by the field there was a commotion, someone pointed up. He felt the crowd’s attention turn to him like a pack of vultures eyeing a roadkill deer.

Ok ok, this was no time for that stagefright bullshit. He had to say something //now// or pause would get too long and he’d lose the moment. 

He took a deep breath. Absolutely nothing relatable, sane, and reassuringly senpai-sounding was forthcoming.

And then, in desperation, Tatsuya did something that by all known and available metrics was an awesomely bad idea: he turned off all his filters and opened his mouth.

“Himuro Tatsuya. Class 1A. I’ve been playing basketball for ten years, and I’m really sick of this bullshit ideology where unless you’re a born ‘genius’ or a ‘prodigy’ that you might as well quit trying. It’s all a big fake! A self-perpetuating con. Yeah, natural talent exists but ‘prodigy’ is just a title to be claimed by the victors! And to prove my little theory I am going to help this team become No 1 in Japan and defeat every other member of the Generation of Miracles!

And then some sports journalist will finally write the words ‘basketball prodigy Himuro Tatsuya.’ And then I’ll print them out and make the haters _fucking eat them!_

Anyway thanks for listening, and I’m sure I’ll see some of you in detention later for pulling this little stunt. So come say ‘Hi!’ And please remember to support the Seirin Basketball Club this coming season.”

And then, gritting his teeth through the vertigo, Tatsuya took a bow.

Gratifyingly, the field broke into a smattering of applause. 

Witness: every culture’s hyperfixation with special-ness. Everyone talks about ‘elites’ and ‘prodigies’ and ‘geniuses’, envies them and obsesses over them. But damned if anybody actually _likes_ those people. You tell any crowd, in any country: ‘I’ll fight your Elites for you, I’ll fucking fight God!!’ and they’ll clap for you until their hands hurt.

“Well you got a little long-winded there, Himuro.” said Coach, once he’d made his way back and numbly handed over the megaphone. “But it’s a good goal. And I’m holding you to it!”

Tatsuya barely heard her, he was still shaking. 

_Oh fuck, I went too far. Way too far. That was 1000% of my daily dose of emotional honesty and I said it OUT LOUD and also IN FRONT OF PEOPLE._

_Kill me. Fucking end me. Right now. Send a lightning bolt or something, at least that’d be a cool way to go._

Tatsuya finally caught his breath and looking up (and up) realized that ‘death by lightning-strike’, might have to get in line behind ‘death by socially maladjusted giant boy.’ 

“So are you gonna fight _me_ too?” Murasakibara rumbled, staring holes into Tatsuya’s face again. 

“No. _No._ We’re on the same team, remember?” 

To Tatsuya’s immense and immediate relief that seemed to settle him down. That feeling of intense localized pressure receded, like someone had taken a brick off his heart.

“Besides, I don’t want to fight you. And I’m not, like, _completely_ crazy.” 

Somewhere behind him Furihata chuckled weakly. I guess with what he’d just said, the jury was still out on that.

At least now Tatsuya’s turn at ‘Embarrassing Earnestness: The Party Game’ was over. He got to lean back against the wall of the storage shed, breathe slowly in and out, and watch the Trio say their piece.

Kawada said some stuff about growing up as a sick kid. Turned out his shaved head wasn’t some kind of hipster aesthetic-minimalist thing. When he looked closer Tatsuya could see a faded surgical scar curving up the back of his scalp from his shirt collar. 

Damn, that was a rough hand to get dealt. Tatsuya made a mental note to upgrade him from ‘that bald kid’ and actually try and remember his name from now on.

Kawahara said something about wanting to be helpful to others.

_I mean, OK kid, whatever floats your boat. I’m in this for glory, power, and for my name to live on in either fame or infamy. But if you wanted to help Koganei look less like a sad wet cat by taking his club flyer, that’s cool too._

After a whispered argument with Coach, Furihata went up to the rail and stammered something about trying his best for a girl who would only date him if he became number one at something.

Tatsuya privately winced. The whole thing was Red Flag central. ‘You have to be Number 1 to date me’? What kind of a bullshit headgame-y brush off was that? 

_Yeaaah, not with my kouhai and not on my watch._

Furihata was too nice of a kid to waste on someone who liked setting impossible standards and stringing people along. Sometimes Tatsuya forgot that people who weren’t him were pretty damn vulnerable at this age when it came to dating. Society was all like ‘watch out for those bad boys!’ but there were girls who got off on wrecking people too. So yeah, was going to have to talk to Furihata about that. But later, and definitely with a heavy dose of diplomacy. 

Meanwhile, Coach was trying to make Murasakibara say something and it wasn’t going well for anyone.

“Do I have to? This is dumb.”

“Yes, you have to.”

“Fiiiiiine.” 

Reluctantly Murasakibara took the megaphone, holding it between his forefinger and thumb like it was a rotten banana. He took a lazy, foot-dragging step towards the edge of the roof and that’s when the Vice Principal and a bunch of his flunkies rolled in and they all got detention.

\---

That night Tatsuya was restless before he got to bed. OK, restless was a real fucking understatement. The rest of the day he’d kind of made it on sheer denial. Holding court in detention had actually been kind of fun. All kinds of people came up to him and wished him luck and/or told him that he was crazy and the whole time he kept it together, toeing the line between tough and humble. Like ‘yeah it’s a tall order, but a man’s got a right to dream, doesn’t he?’ 

Some guys from other sports clubs stopped by once their practices wrapped up, soccer and baseball mostly. They started this whole fun commiseration chain about how annoying it was to be at such a new school without a set reputation, and how everyone in the bracket better not be writing them off. So he’d definitely tapped into something there. All the Seirin clubs seemed determined to really go hard this season. And why the hell not?

Coach fielded a couple questions about their official game schedule, visibly restrained herself from feeling up/trying to poach the soccer club guys, and went back to playing her 3DS again. 

Even the Trio got mobbed to a lesser degree. Though the girl Furihata had mentioned absolutely failed to turn up or appreciate his grand gesture. Color Tatsuya unsurprised.

Ignoring everything Murasakibara had put his head down on his backpack and straight-up fallen asleep in the corner. The supervising teacher looked like he wanted to say something and then, wisely, didn’t.

But as soon as Tatsuya got back to the apartment and closed the door and thought about what he’d said, _really thought_ about the consequences, he actually got so anxious that he felt like he was going to levitate out of his skin. 

His brain was stuck in a loop, like a shitty DJ cranking out an endless minor key remix:

_Do you have any idea what you’re doing? You are literally stepping on your own cracks:_

_Your complete fucking inability to make peace with your limits. The way you’re immediately threatened by people who are better than you at anything you love. How desperately you want to be special and how deep down you just know that you aren’t._

_You, a guy who’s ‘pretty above average’ at his best, a guy who has ZERO natural talent, just threw down the gauntlet to a bunch of actual, confirmed geniuses._

_You stood up in front of the whole school and literally promised to fight the physical representation of all your Issues(™)._

_How is any of this going to end well?_

But even as the bad beat kept going there was also something rising up inside him to meet it. A counterpoint. An answer.

_Well it’s about fucking time, isn’t it?_

_It’s about time I fought my issues. Instead of thinking they’ll go away. Instead of hoping that one day I’ll become an actual mature, stable person instead of just pretending to be one. As if one day I’ll just magically stop being fucked up about the things I’m fucked up about._

_Maybe I need this._

_And as for the Generation of Miracles? Well, I’ve lost enough sleep biting my nails over those bastards._

_Now they can lose sleep over_ me _._

~


	12. A Sparkly Twink Asshole Appears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ILU Kise, you're awful though.

That morning Tatsuya expected the air to somehow be different the second he stepped out of his building. Ionized maybe, to match the ‘come at me bro’ feeling he’d woken up with. But it wasn’t. He had this strange idea that maybe all of Tokyo had heard what he’d said on the rooftop by now and that people on the street were looking at him like, ‘there goes that crazy punk who challenged The Miracles!’ But they weren’t. Walking down to the bus stop he wasn’t getting stared at any more than usual, and those were probably for being good looking. Maybe the universe trying to send him hints about not taking himself so seriously. 

Tatsuya smiled wryly at the universe’s suggestion and went to class. 

I mean, if _he_ didn’t take himself seriously, who the fuck else would?

He’ll admit, cruising through the hallways he was on the lookout for a particular landmark: something large, lumbering and purple. But looking out over a sea of student heads(it really hit him sometimes, Tatsuya was _so tall_ in Japan, it was crazy) there was nothing but pert ponytails and bady applied hair gel - Murasakibara was nowhere to be found. 

Damn. Tatsuya really wanted to ask him what he’d been about to say into the megaphone before they got caught. It was really too bad that the first year classrooms were on a different floor and he couldn’t just casually walk into one to look for him.

Though another thing happened - on the way to his homeroom Tatsuya stepped smoothly around a guy, only to notice that it was Furihata Kouki.

“Himuro-senpai!” Furihata said, before looking around nervously. “Oh man, I’m on the wrong floor again huh?”

“It’s OK, they really need to label these hallways better.” Tatsuya would cop to that. On his first day he had drawn Seirin’s floor plan on the back of one of his notebooks. Every night since he studied it alongside his homework so that he would never do something so basic as to get lost in his own school. “Oh hey, I was wondering, you’re in the same class as Murasakibara right?”

Furihata nodded warily, like this was a fact that he’d honestly like to forget. Tatsuya felt a flicker of annoyance. 

_Like, you know, maybe Mr. Purple People Eater over there would have better social skills if all of y’all stopped freaking the fuck out whenever you saw him? Anybody ever think of that? People mirror behavior. Back in the States when everyone used to look at me like I was bad news I sure as hell wasn’t inclined to be friendly._

_But whatever, one step at a time._ And you couldn’t catch flies with vinegar.

“Cool.” he said, in his friendliest tone. “Because I was wondering if you could, kind of, keep an eye on him.”

Furihata blanched.

“But, Himuro-senpai he’s _scary_! He’s kinda really scary, OK? I’m not sure what I-” Then he got a thoughtful look on his face. “Wait, are you worried that he’s going to get bullied? For sticking out so much?” 

Tatsuya honestly hadn’t considered it. I mean how fucking stupid would you have to be? But this was a good angle. If a softie like Furihata thought that he was doing a good deed he’d be much more likely to go along with it. And the way he’d said ‘bullied’ hinted at some past shit. No wonder the kid had anxiety issues.

“I mean, it’s a possibility.” Tatsuya said slowly “Though honestly I’m more worried some idiot will try something and then Murasakibara will casually throw him out of a window and go back to eating chips. And then there goes our defense, you know?”

Furihata let out a startled laugh and clapped both hands over his mouth. “Y-yeah, good point. I mean if it’s for the club...”

“Thanks man, glad I could count on you! Just talk to him normally, he’s really not that bad!” Tatsuya said brightly and made his escape before the other boy could say no.

The ‘btw, your girlfriend is awful’ conversation would have to wait. You couldn’t just lead with something that heavy. But give it another week and he could get friendlier with Furihata and maybe then the kid would actually listen to some advice.

\--- 

At least Murasakibara was already there and changed when Tatsuya got to the locker room. He was sitting on the floor wedged between the lockers and the bench with his head sideways on one of his knees, knobby fingers rooting around inside a pack of Jumbo Almond Pocky. Even curled practically into a ball he still took up a ridiculous amount of space.

“Hey.” Tatsuya said.

Murasakibara’s eyes swiveled towards him like ‘yep, there you are’ and went back to staring into the middle distance.

The Trio hadn’t arrived yet. On the other side of the room, the regulars were huddled around an older issue of “Basketball Notes Monthly.” Tatsuya tuned them out until he heard “-features the Generation of Miracles-”

“Yeah look, they have full page fact sheets and photos for all the Teiko starters!” Izuki, who was currently holding the magazine, made a face. “Though why is there only a ‘from the back’ shot of this last guy? You can’t even see his face...” 

The others crowded closer. Tatsuya drifted over to read over their shoulders without looking like he was reading over their shoulders.

“Huh… Murasakibara, your section is shorter than the others.” Hyuuga said.

“That’s unexpected! ‘Cause he’s the tallest, right? Oh man, oh man, I know I’ve got a good one for this-” Izuki pulled out a notebook where he apparently kept a faithful record of all his awful puns and began flicking through it frantically in search of a zinger.

Meanwhile under so many curious looks Murasakibara licked a smear of Pocky-chocolate off his thumb and nonchalantly said “The reporters never asked me as many questions as everyone else. Probably 'cause they were scared of me.”

The regulars looked at each other. “That’s... a little sad.” they chorused.

“I don’t care. It's annoying having to answer the same dumb thing over and over again. Nobody cared about the answers anyway - they just needed page filler and we were popular.“

I guess if you were famous it was easy to get cynical about the whole thing. He was probably even right.

“Whoa, it says that other than trying different snacks your hobby is... _baking?_ ”

Tatsuya almost dropped his shoe.

_What now??!_

"Yep." Murasakibara said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Wait, seriously?! Baking?” Hyuuga bluntly said what everyone else was thinking. “It’s kind of against type..."

Privately Tatsuya was right there with him. It was like finding out that Conan the Barbarian occasionally wandered off a battlefield piled high with enemy corpses to mix up a nice batch of brownies. Also, while Tatsuya was a decent cook baking had always seemed way too fiddly. A teaspoon of this, 200 ml of that, put the dough in the fridge for 4 hours, who had time for that shit? Keeping track of ingredients, doing a series of exacting steps in the right order, honestly didn’t seem like it would be Murasakibara’s speed. 

Tatsuya thought that, and immediately felt like kind of a dick.

_You hate it when people put you in a box, so why are you doing it to him, dumbass?_

"Mitobe says that it's fine if a boy likes to bake." Koganei said with a pointed look to the room at large.

“And actually, most famous pastry chefs are men.” Tatsuya chimed in, just to be supportive or whatever. And because he still felt a little guilty for his last thought.

Suddenly he was stuck with this bizarre mental image of Murasakibara puttering around a kitchen trying to separate egg whites with his giant hands. For some reason the mental version of him was wearing a cute yellow apron. Tatsuya thought he’d gotten surprisingly decent sleep last night all things considered but _apparently not_ , wtf brain.

"But really? Like, cookies and stuff?" Izuki’s eyebrows were doing the Spock thing.

"Yeah those. And cakes. And pastries. Mom asks me to do tea cakes for her mah jong group all the time, it's such a pain. I can't do as much of the fancy French stuff though 'cause the ingredients are expensive and I don’t have a stand mixer. Making flaky dough by hand is too much effort." 

The others goggled. To be fair, it was probably the longest they’d ever heard him speak about anything.

"C-can I be your partner for the next home EC class then? I'm pretty lost with that stuff..." Furihata, who’d snuck into the locker room while everyone was distracted, piped up. 

_Atta boy, Furi._

Murasakibara looked up at him unblinkingly. But maybe he remembered what Tatsuya had told him about giving the other first-years a chance because all he said was "’Kay, if you want."

Meanwhile Izuki was still making his way down the article. 

“Let’s see… ‘Other Notable Facts: youngest of five siblings.’ Whoa! Five?!”

“That’s like triple the national birth rate. Your family must be getting some tax breaks.” 

“And raising the bar for the national height average, amarite?” Izuki snickered, but not, Tatsuya was relieved to notice, in a mean way.

Murasakibara yawned. “There’s probably tax breaks.” he admitted. The Pocky had run out so he was just staring at the ceiling in a sort of dreamy unfocused way. “Dunno why there’s so many of us, I guess my parents just really liked each other.”

And normally this would have called for some kind of teasing (I mean come on) but he said it with an unselfconscious innocence that nobody seemed to want to mess with.

“Mitobe’s parents might give them some competition though” Koganei piped up “- he’s the oldest of twelve!” 

“Twelve?” Murasakibara made a face. The sheer weirdness of that seemed to break through his apathy a little “...that’s a lot.” 

Mitobe nodded.

“Is your house really cramped?”

Mitobe nodded faster. Then he made a series of gestures that must have been JSL.

Koganei took a breath to start translating but Murasakibara put one of his hands sort-of in front of his face like ‘stop.’

“I know what he said. Yeah mine’s cramped. I only gotta whole room now because my older brother got married and my other older brother moved out.”

“Funny, I had this thought that all the members of the Generation of Miracles lived in big mansions or something...” Tsuchida spoke up from the back, fiddling nervously with the pages of the magazine. 

Murasakibara snorted. 

“Not me.” 

\---

Outside, there was a pitter-patter and a sort of squealing noise. Everyone’s heads popped up as Kawahara practically skidded into the locker room 

“Look alive, Coach is coming over!” he wheezed.

“Was she… skipping?” Hyuuga asked, with a significant look. Yikes, how many bizarre traditions did Seirin have? It was like Tatsuya had joined the world’s fluffiest frat. 

“No, she looked a little pissed honestly.”

Coach did, in fact, arrive like a diminutive storm cloud. Her face said that she was ready to kick people and assign 50 extra reps to those that could take it. Tatsuya could already feel himself waking up sore tomorrow morning.

When they got to the gym she practically threw down the clipboard and pulled Hyuuga and Izuki, who was apparently Vice Captain, into a huddle. Tatsuya conveniently decided to warm up with some threes about 10 feet away. It was amazing that with all the loud parties he’d gone to his hearing was still sharp enough to pick up everything.

“I was trying to get a practice match set up with Kaijou High School but the bastards gave me the run around.” Coach snarled, deflating slightly. “It’s a little tough this year...Though I'm sure I'd do better if I made the old guy we nabbed to be the club advisor do the phone calls. I swear some of those people still think I'm the team _manager_.”

Hyuuga sighed. “Do you think it’s because they know who we got?” 

“It… might make it harder. No one wants their new teams crushed and demoralized before the InterHigh preliminaries even start.”

Hyuuga looked thoughtful, his eyes cut toward the far court where Murasakibara was lazily doing his stretches. “Strength really is a double edged sword huh.” 

Coach promptly put him in a headlock. 

“Juuunpeeeiiiii” she growled, “don’t quote your Warring States proverb nonsense at me right now.”

“But Coach!” Izuki exclaimed “he was trying to find the right _time period_ to say that ;)”

“Twenty laps! No, _thirty_ laps for that!” 

“Aye aye, ma’am~” With a cheeky wink, Izuki took off running.

“And that was awful! You’re actually getting worse!” she yelled at his retreating form, still doing her best to sort of casually wring her Captain’s neck. Hyuuga, whose head was positioned pretty damn conveniently at that point, didn’t seem to be struggling all that much. Maybe he wasn’t hopeless after all. 

Just then Tatsuya felt a weird wave of empathy for the guy. They were probably childhood friends, him and Coach, they had that kind of dynamic. That’s why it was so damn difficult for Hyuuga to spit out that he liked her. 

Crushes, the impending threat of some hormonal disaster of a teenage relationship, that could really fuck an old friendship up, give it all kinds of weird undercurrents. And the person with the stronger personality, the most experience usually ended up with all the power… Anyway it was always cringey and weird to watch a childhood friend start dealing with that adolescent bullshit. Like the time he’d caught his baby brother giving some of the older boys who hung around the courts longing, kittenish looks. It had made Tatsuya feel sort of sick inside. 

Whoa, back up. This was about Coach and the Captain. Not anything or anyone else. 

And Coach definitely had the dominant personality between the two of them. And she didn’t seem like the type to let a guy down easy… But maybe she knew already? She was hella observant. But even observant, introspective people had the weirdest blind spots when it came to love.

As he was thinking about all that, carefully stepping over certain thoughts that would lead down a spike-studded slip-and-slide to the past, Tatsuya totally forgot to look like he was practicing and then Coach totally noticed and yelled at him and made him do suicides.

_Shit._

At least the whole thing seemed to cheer her up.

\----

Practice was going suspiciously well. 

At the far basket Mitobe was gamely trying to fight Murasakibara for rebounds, brave guy that he was. Koganei and Tsuchida were leading the Trio through dribbling drills on the sidelines. Meanwhile Tatsuya was trying to find new ways to get past Izuki, who for some damn reason, was much harder to fake out than any of the other regulars.

He scored a single hard-won layup when suddenly somewhere in the background the ambient noise level went waaay up. Loud chattering floated in from outside, like a lot of girls talking all at once. The last time Tatsuya had heard that kind of thing, an ex had dragged him to a Jason Mraz concert.

And that's when a bright voice yelled “Hey there!~~” 

Heads turned. The door to the gym was flung open max-dramatically and a guy sauntered in like he owned the place.

He was wearing a cheap, gray school uniform suit but making it look more expensive from sheer confidence - rocking it, like it was Armani from a sample sale.

Let’s just get it out of the way: Tatsuya had to admit it, even as he felt a stress headache starting at the base of his neck - the guy was hot. 

Stepped-out-of-an-ad hot. Definitely three cuts above the general population thanks to genetics and then stretching, like, another level or two upward due to some real judicious application of makeup and skincare products - moisturizing toner for sure. An unnatural smoothness around his jaw hinted strongly of bb cream. Definitely mascara. 

Nuclear fucking overkill on the eyeliner. 

He had blonde hair in a sunny bleached shade, his salon feathered bangs bounced annoyingly as he bounded, literally bounded over like a goddamn loony tune. He was the kind of guy who should come with _‘sproing’_ sound effects built in. 

Midcourt he came to a stop and picked up a ball that had slipped out of Furihata’s hands and rolled in his direction. Then, with a coy little smirk, he dribbled it forward, left, around an imaginary defender and then dunked it, easy as anything. 

Tatsuya put him at about six foot three. 

Tatsuya hated him.

“Ha ha! I hope you all don't mind, the equipment looked so new I just wanted to test it out~~~” the guy said, smiling the bright, fake-innocent grin of someone who knew they were acting like an asshole and was just daring you to call them out on it.

Oh yeah. Tatsuya knew this type. Santa Monica flashbacks to the max - spoiled, narcissistic rich kids with 100k+ Instagram followers. Beautiful outer shells with sociopathic tendencies or mini black holes of ‘I need constant validation to function’ inside. 

Both, if you were unluckly.

_Congratulations_. Tatsuya thought, maintaining a ‘looking at a not-very-interesting bug’ expression even as other people around him gasped and muttered and otherwise reacted. _I don’t even know your name and I already want to punch you in the neck._

That was kind of a lie though - he had a clue about the name. After all, he’d sneaked a peek at the cover of the basketball magazine as it was going around and this guy only looked marginally less glossy in real life.

Kise Ryota, the Generation of Miracles’ small forward. Part-time model. Full-time jackass. 

Completely ignoring everyone else, who had clustered awkwardly around Hyuuga and Coach, Kise Ryota sidled around to the edge of the court and came to a stop in front of Murasakibara. 

It was some comfort that standing there he suddenly looked a lot less impressive - a golden retriever in front of a great dane.

“Hiiii! Long time no see, right? Can you believe it's been like, _almost a month_ since graduation? Oh my god! (ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧” He put a hand up to his face theatrically. “Aaaanyway, I was just wondering, have you seen Kurokocchi? Is he here?” 

Murasakibara looked down at him with his own, 100% genuine, ‘looking at something not very interesting’ expression.

“I haven't seen him. He's not in my class and I checked the other first-year classes and I didn't see him. So he's probably not here.” he said flatly.

“But, ummm, did you really look? Because you know, Kurokocchi’s kind of hard to find when he wants to be-”

Murasakibara cut him off. 

“Don't be stupid. I looked.” His eyes narrowed. “And don't say _‘Hi’_ to me like you care if you just came here to look for Kuro-chin.” 

That visibly knocked some of the wind out of Kise’s sails.

“Sorry, sorry! I guess that kind of looks bad on my part... Anyway so this is your school huh? It's kind of... _new_ isn't it?” 

He said that ‘new’ in _such_ a _tone_. Like ‘new’ was the nicest thing he could think to say about it. Tatsuya, who didn’t have that many feelings towards Seirin High School beyond ‘I’m here now, I guess,’ felt a sudden stirring or patriotism. Like, hey asshole, our grounds are nice - we have cherry trees and a courtyard with a fountain. Where the fuck are _you_ from? 

“And the student body is pretty welcoming, haha~ Be with you ladies in a moment~” Kise winked and waved over his shoulder to a cluster of girls that were crowding around the gym doorway. A couple of them squealed loudly and ducked back outside. 

Ugh, it was depressing how an aura of popularity would turn totally reasonable girls into mindless zombies. (Tatsuya conveniently blocked out the memory of that time when he was 13 and thought he saw Kobe at an In-and-Out and had a minor meltdown)

Having fully bounced back to ego cloud nine Kise stood up on his tiptoes so that he could better look his former teammate in the eye. Nice that he felt so insecure that he had to compensate, but the overly-familiar way he was leaning towards Murasakibara made Tatsuya’s knuckles itch. 

_Stop doing that, he doesn’t like forced eye contact._

“Heyyy though, now that I'm here. I have this idea, you know… Murasakibaracchi, why don’t you come to my school?! The ceilings are nice and high! I mean technically we have a Center right now, but you know he doesn’t have a patch on _you_. We could soooo use your help~~ And I’m sure I can talk the Captain into letting you have your snack break. It’ll be just like old times!”

_Oh my god you fucking asshole, you can’t just say ‘snacks’ like it’s the magic word._ Tatsuya seethed internally. _He’s not a pet!_

“It would be nice to see a familiar face around.” Kise batted his mascara-smothered eyelashes in a blatantly manipulative fashion before he want for the kill:

“Besides, you seem kind of wasted here, to be honest.” 

_Oh my god, this is amateur hour. Manipulation 101: it’s either ‘harmless old friend who just wants what’s good for you’ or ‘ruthless pragmatist.’ Don’t mix and match bro._

But Murasakibara, if anything, looked darkly amused. 

"Nee Kise-chin, aren't you kinda forgetting something?" he drawled. "You're the weakest one out of all of us.” 

He took a single heavy step into Kise’s personal space. “Should you really be trying to tell _me_ what to do? Was that ever a thing?"

Kise wilted. 

"Umm.. no. Pretty much never. Now that I think back, Murasakibaracchi only did ever listen to Midorimacchi and Akashicci...” He rubbed nervously at the back of his neck. “Sorry, I guess I got kind of excited and overstepped my bounds a little. Still, won’t you at least think about it?”

Murasakibara looked around slowly. Koganei, Tsuchida, Izuki and Hyuuga stared back at him, maybe a little sheepishly, maybe a little bit more conscious of the way the groups had fallen out - how there was a huge gap between where they were standing and where he was standing.

But in the end Murasakibara simply shrugged. 

“This is fine.” he said.

Tatsuya let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“This is Iron Heart’s team.” 

This was another patented weird Murasakibara sentence that probably made total sense with context.

“Oh, um.. I see...” Kise looked like he didn’t ‘see’ anything and was actually righteously confused but was too proud to admit it. "And now Murasakibaracchi’s... taking it over?"

"Pretty much."

"Huh that's funny, wonder how _he's_ taking that. Where _is_ Iron Heart anyway? Man, what was his family name again… Kiyoshi, right?"

For the first time since he got there Kise Ryouta actually lowered himself enough to look at the Seirin regulars, tilting his head like ‘hurry up and tell me.’

"He had an injury last season. He should be coming back later." Hyuuga said, looking unnerved. 

His normal, squeaky-clean Japanese upbringing probably prevented him from answering with ‘none of your fucking business, kindly fuck off.’ Shame.

"Ok, okay. That’s too bad." Kise said, completely insincerely, and then immediately tuned him out like he and all the other ‘little people’ didn’t exist. Like Miracles were the only ones who mattered.

And there it was: his cue. 

Tatsuya stepped forward.

“I hate to interrupt. And it’s touching that you came all the way from... _wherever_ to interrupt our practice but… we have practice.”

He turned to Hyuuga “Don’t we, Captain?”

“Yes, actually.” Hyuuga said, thankfully catching his drift, though he was giving Tatsuya a look like he couldn't believe they were on the same side. But for that moment they absolutely were.

Operation: Get This Glittery Blond Thing Out Of Our Fucking Gym/School/Life had commenced.

Kise, annoying to the last, did a double take. Like he hadn’t even seen Tatsuya standing behind Murasakibara’s left shoulder for the past five minutes. Now he gave him a really thorough once-over, like he was making up for lost time. It was a look evenly split between the look guys gave him before they decided to throw down, or before they decided to corner him at a party and stick their hand down his jeans.

“Whoa, you’re not too shabby! Want a business card for my agency? We could always use… _extras_ for the photoshoots.”

“That’s really nice of you!” Tatsuya said, in a sugary-sweet tone that said he knew full well the model wasn’t being nice at all.

“You know, I haven't seen you around before~ Did we beat your school at the InterHigh last year? The faces all kind of blur together.” Kise said, stalking around Tatsuya (and, he was 90% sure, sneaking a look at his ass.)

“I'm new in town.”

“What a coincidence! Kind of funny since I heard something about some newcomer saying how he'll defeat the Generation of Miracles. I mean, A+ for aspiration! Though it’s a little _misguided_ maybe.” Kise put his finger to his lips like he was posing for a full-page spread but under all his makeup his eyes were yellow and fixed, like a fox at the zoo.

“But hey, now that I’m here, how about it?” he continued, dripping fake-casualness even as Tatsuya could see shoulder muscles tensing under his cheap school uniform button-down “You and me, one-on-one. Best two of out three?”

Tatsuya took a breath. He had to choose his next words very carefully.

“Listen _first-year_ , I’m loving the enthusiasm, but if you want to fight me - just have your Coach call our Coach and schedule a practice match. Let’s make it official, shall we? Because I would never dream of disrespecting my teammates by having some kind of diva showdown cut into their practice time. You know, sort of like _you_ barging in here?” 

Tatsuya took a theatrical pause of his own, shaking his head sadly “You’d think a _professional model_ would be a lot more _considerate_ of other people schedules...”

Kise froze. Tatsuya could see gears turning in his brain, looking for a way to spin out of this. But there wasn’t one. Oh Japanese society. So many little rules and politenesses. So easy to box somebody in with respectability. 

He opened his mouth to say something but Tatsuya cut him off. 

“But since you came all this way, it would be rude not to show you some of Seirin’s famous hospitality, I know just the thing.” 

He turned to the Trio.

“Why don’t you guys get the famous model here a table and a bottle of water? I'm sure he'd just love to do his part and sign some photo books and autographs for all of his many fans.”

This statement was, predictably, met with howling cheers and further shrieking from the crowd of girls outside.

The Trio gave him identical deer-in-headlights stares of ‘Oh my god is this seriously happening?’ but then, with a determined little frown, Furihata tugged on Kawada’s sleeve and they began walking to the supply closet that had tables and sports equipment, Kawahara trailing behind them.

“Just put it outside, please.” Hyuuga spoke up, his glasses glinting dangerously “We need to keep the noise level down.”

_Oh, Captain._ Tatsuya thought warmly. _You are probationary off my shit list because you have just enough of a mean streak to be worthwhile._

“Yes Captain!” the Trio chorused.

“What a great idea!” Not even bb cream could hide the veins popping up in the blonde’s forehead.“That's really thoughtful of you! Sorry, I didn’t get your name?” 

Tatsuya smiled like ice wouldn’t melt in his mouth. 

“I’m Himuro Tatsuya, nice to meet you~” 

“Gosh!” Kise Ryouta said through his perfect white teeth “I wish I could say the same~ You know, you're right! I think I'm really going to have to talk to my Coach about this."

"Please do.” 

And Tatsuya was going to let him go with that, honest, no need to kick someone when they were down… Except, Kise had insulted his team. So, you know what, sparkle-fucker deserved the full experience.

“Oh hey, one more thing: so this morning, when you were doing your eyeliner, did you keep messing up the point and having to extend it? Because it's kind-of too long. Just thought I’d let you know~" 

For a split second, the friendly mask slipped and the look on Kise’s face told Tatsuya that here was someone who was fully prepared to hate his guts for the rest of his goddamn life.

_Well, right back at you, you glittery twink asshole._

_You shouldn't have fucking rolled in here cutting into my lap time. And trying to poach Murasakibara... Like, what the hell? Piss off._

Like an unleashed tide, fangirls began to spill over from the doorway and onto the court. With excellent hunting instincts they surrounded their prey, sunk their delicate, manicured fingers into the fabric of his cheap suit and marched him off execution-style, followed by the Trio, struggling under the heavy folding table. A long, winding line was already forming outside, stretching far onto the grassy lawn.

Tatsuya waved cheerfully at his fallen foe. “Bye now!”

His last glimpse of Kise Ryouta was of the Miracle walking out of the Seirin gym and into the ravening maw of the crowd with the fixed expression of someone who'd been temporarily outmaneuvered. God, that was _sweet_. Tatsuya wanted a cigarette. And maybe a framed picture of his face.

Petty? Him? _Never_.

"Holy shit!" Koganei was snickering into his cupped hands. “You sure sent him packing.”

"Wow! What a... _chilly_ reception!" Izuki managed to say before he doubled over giggling.

Feeling generous, Tatsuya held up his hand and Izuki feebly unbent from laughing long enough to high-five him. 

After a little while the Trio came back in, closing the door behind them with an air of a job well done. Furihata looked a little shaky but proud. Kawada was whistling. Kawahara made a cheeky ‘dusting off his hands, good-riddance-to-bad-rubbish’ gesture.

They were good kids, really. Tatsuya flashed them a thumbs up for positive reinforcement.

“So that’s another guy from the Generation of Miracles huh? A model and good at basketball - that’s pretty brutal. He was kind of... _annoying_ though, wasn’t he?” Koganei said with zero filter and a thoughtful expression.

“Yeah, it’s a lot quieter now.” Murasakibara drawled.

Which, like: ouch, _savage_. Then again if Tatsuya had to spend years on the same team as Kise he’d be 300% done with him too. And maybe Murasakibara was still kind of pissed that he’d come all this way to look for some other guy and used him as a pretext. I mean, Tatsuya would have been pissed.

“And _sure_ , he came all this way just to ask about his friend.” Tatsuya crossed his arms over his chest. “Rode fifty minutes on a bus, on a school night? Already wearing his basketball shoes? _Please._ That guy came here to scope us out and to pick a fight."

“...Kise-chin’s good at multitasking.”

Behind them, Coach blew her whistle and clapped her hands together. 

“Right. Floor show’s over! Like Himuro said, we still have practice to get through - so get to it!”

Everyone went back to their drills but after their unexpected enemy visitor they seemed a lot more motivated: Kawahara got a lucky break where he made ten free throws in a row. With a three-on-three Koganei, Kawada, and Mitobe beat Izuki, Furihata, and Tsuchida. Koganei was crowing and rubbing Kawada’s shaved head ‘for luck!’

And every time Tatsuya was tempted to cut corners or do a less-than-perfect rep he would listen for the sound of girls squealing outside, and a little black flame of utter satisfaction bloomed in his heart like a cactus flower.

~


End file.
